Anna Freud employee and Psychotherapist wins Churchill Fellowship to explore hope after trauma
Prestigious fellowship will see Anna Freud colleague travel to schools affected by traumatic events in the USA and South Africa.
Adelaide O'Mahony, psychotherapist and Senior Impact and Engagement Manager at the UK Trauma Council (UKTC), has been named a 2025 Churchill Fellow.
The UKTC is an Anna Freud project that aims to create a world that nurtures and protects young people following potentially traumatic events. The Churchill Fellowship supports UK citizens to travel internationally, meeting global experts and learning from innovative practice abroad, before bringing those insights home to inform policy and practice.
As part of her Fellowship, Adelaide will travel to New York, New Haven, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Cape Town to explore how schools and communities support recovery in the aftermath of mass traumatic events. Her focus will be on the psychological and cultural role of hope, how it is fostered or hindered in the wake of large-scale trauma.
She will meet with leading academic institutions such as the Yale Center for Traumatic Stress and Recovery, grassroots organisations working directly with impacted communities and experts by lived experience. The project builds on the work of the UKTC, who offers evidence-based resources to support schools in providing a compassionate and comprehensive response to traumatic events.
Adelaide said:
“I thought it was interesting to see the reception to Netflix’s drama series Adolescence earlier this year. As the show reflects, schools are often left to pick up the pieces after a tragedy has occurred. I want to understand what happens once the media moves on, how schools rebuild in the long-term and what gives young people the best possible chance of recovery.
“While there’s no single roadmap for recovery, research consistently points to hope as one of the most powerful protective factors we have following traumatic experiences. Trauma can shatter a person’s vision of their future. But cultivating hope offers a lifeline. Hope is not about denying pain or relying on wishful thinking, it’s about sustaining the belief that something beyond the current devastation is still possible.
“I feel so lucky to have received this research grant, and am committed to making the most of the opportunity”
Adelaide’s research will inform work at the UKTC, as well as contribute to a broader understanding of how education systems in the UK can nurture hope and resilience in the face of the most difficult circumstances.
Find out more
For information about trauma for professionals and carers, visit the UKTC website.