Dr Rebecca Horn

Research Fellow in the Institute for Global Health and Development at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh

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Research Fellow in the Institute for Global Health and Development, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh

Rebecca Horn is a psychologist, with a background in forensic psychology. Early in her career she conducted applied research with police forces, probation services and the prison service, and worked for the Prison Service as a forensic psychologist. In 2003 she left the UK to work with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Kakuma Refugee Camp, northern Kenya, where she spent the next three and a half years managing four psychosocial programmes in the camp. In 2007 she worked for the Witness and Victims Section of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) in Freetown, initially conducting a research project for the SCSL looking at the impact on witnesses of testifying in an international war crimes tribunal, and subsequently as the psychologist for the Witness and Victims Section.

She joined IGHD at QMU in February 2008, after being awarded an Economic and Social Research Council Fellowship to develop and write up three research projects related to her work in Kakuma refugee camp, and in Kitgum (Northern Uganda). Since the end of that project she has maintained her role as a Research Fellow with IGHD, alongside working on a consultancy basis both as a practitioner and researcher in humanitarian settings including the occupied Palestinian territories, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Her research is broadly related to psychosocial wellbeing in areas affected by conflict, displacement or disaster. As a practitioner, her work has included managing psychosocial programmes in refugee camps, and supporting organisations to integrate community-based psychosocial approaches into their programmes. For example, in 2013 she spent six months in Maban refugee camp, South Sudan, supporting Lutheran World Federation to integrate community-based psychosocial approaches into their education and child protection programmes. Capacity building, both for organisations and those affected by displacement or disaster, is also a large part of her work.

As well as being a Research Fellow with IGHD, Rebecca is a core member of the Church of Sweden/ Act Alliance Psychosocial Roster. She is also a member of the editorial board of the journal ‘Intervention: Journal of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Conflict Affected Areas’.