Editor’s note: IASP will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2024. Even though the anniversary is still a few years away, it already has us thinking about the history of IASP and the evolution of pain research over the past five decades. So, we are providing a series of podcasts that will cover both of those topics, featuring senior leaders in the field who have made major contributions to pain research and care, including those with major roles at IASP.
Our latest such podcast features Amanda C de C Williams, PhD. Dr. Williams is professor of clinical health psychology at University College London, and a consultant clinical psychologist at the Pain Management Centre, University College London Hospital, UK. She also works for the International Centre for Health and Human Rights and is section editor for psychology on the journal PAIN.
After years of full-time clinical work in pain management, during which she completed her PhD, she moved increasingly into research, joining University College London in 2004. Her research interests include evidence-based medicine applied to psychologically based treatments for pain; evolutionary perspectives on pain; behavioral expression of pain and its interpretation by clinicians; better recognition and treatment of pain from torture; and responsive wearable technology to extend healthcare into patients’ own environments. She teaches undergraduates and graduate students, and has written more than 300 papers and chapters on pain and psychology; her publications are available here.
In the podcast below, Dr. Williams speaks with PRF Correspondent Kai Karos, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for the Psychology of Learning and Experimental Psychopathology, KU Leuven, Belgium, to discuss her path to pain psychology, what she wants people with pain to know, the evolutionary perspective on pain, and much more. The podcast is also available on Spotify here and on Apple Podcasts here. (To listen to other PRF podcasts, visit our podcasts homepage on Spotify here and on Apple Podcasts here).
PRF Correspondent Kai Karos, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for the Psychology of Learning and Experimental Psychopathology, KU Leuven, Belgium.