Imogen Lambert, PhD, MBACP

Imogen is an academic, researcher, and therapist working at the intersection of safeguarding, trauma, domestic abuse. Her work combines frontline practice, policy-relevant research, and interdisciplinary scholarship across psychosocial studies, sociology, and political theory.

She began her education at the Purcell School of Music on a full UK government scholarship before shifting away from classical music to pursue a degree in Religion and Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS, University of London. This included a year working in Cairo on housing and land rights following the 2011 Egyptian revolution. She later worked as a journalist with The New Arab, focusing on the Syrian conflict, Palestinian politics, and Egypt, including a year based in Burj el-Barajneh in South Beirut.

She was awarded a scholarship to carry out a PhD in Political Theory at Loughborough University, which she completed while juggling lone single parenthood. Alongside academic work, she has extensive professional experience in domestic abuse services, delivering specialist training and undertaking frontline safeguarding casework.

She was a researcher at the University of Nottingham on a Nuffield Foundation–funded project examining exploitation of adults with learning disabilities, neurodiversity, mental health issues, and cognitive impairments. Her work has informed national safeguarding policy and practice, including contributions used by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), and she led the development of a practitioner toolkit on assessing capacity in suspected exploitation cases.

Imogen has lectured at Loughborough University, supervised MSc dissertations at Nottingham, and most recently served as an Associate Lecturer in Psychosocial Studies and Sociology at Birkbeck, University of London. She is currently a Research Fellow in the Interdisciplinary Research Group at the University of Warwick, contributing ethics and mixed-methods research to Horizon-funded projects in health and social care. 

Imogen is also a qualified integrative counsellor and therapist (MBACP), with training in attachment-based therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), compassion-focused therapy, and trauma-informed approaches.

Her research interests include exploitation and abuse, capacity, and the psychosocial dimensions of harm, care, and institutional response.