'Democracy is something we fought for'

Can you tell me your story – how did you become interested in psychology?

I come from an engineering background in electronics and when I finished uni, I couldn't get the job that I wanted and felt a bit disillusioned with things here at the time. I took to travelling for a while and backpacked around. In those years, the seeds were really planted for me. I went around some very poor countries…

I spent nearly a year in Nepal trekking and in India, and I worked in America for a while too, and one of the things that really struck me was how much of a difference luck made in people's lives and how unfair it was. That really stuck with me and I wanted to make a difference in some way.

Around six years ago, I came out as transgender. I had a lot of discrimination, a lot of hate, being assaulted, and I lost most of my family and friends. I've always been quite a positive person throughout my life, I've always looked to try and make things better. I had curiosity about how I was treated and reached out to help other people in the process. I've done quite a lot of work on social media and had a few million views on my videos, people contacted me for help and support and I put a book together (Transcending Boundaries - A Collection of Transgender Life Experiences).

At that time, my career was in electronics and, once I started to pass as a woman and take on new roles, I found I was facing an awful lot of discrimination at work – certainly in engineering fields. I organically began to move away from engineering and into psychology. I'd always been interested in psychology and I'm now a student of Psychology at the Open University, studying for an honours degree. 

I'm very interested in cultural differences and discrimination – my wife and I have a home in Thailand and I've never experienced discrimination over there, it's not part of their culture and people don't see it as a bad thing to be different. Meanwhile, over here, I have experienced so much discrimination, and I've been trying to research the roots of discrimination and looking at imprinting behaviour – I've been writing a lot on this and I want to try to publish some material on this area.

And what interested you about political psychology?

Recently, we've all been aware of a right-wing movement in politics which has been more radical, more extreme and more divisive. I think most of us can see this and we're concerned about it. I was looking for ways to have an impact to help and support people in various ways, and one of those ways was politically. I joined a local party and got elected as Diversity Officer and through that role I've connected with MPs and I attend a lot of meetings… I chaperone one MP, and work with two others. I feel like that's a really privileged position and I was looking for what I could do to try to make things better.

The structure of society, and of business, to focus on continuous growth and profit seems very harmful, both in terms of the environment and people's mental health. We see more people struggling and, of course, wellbeing includes financial wellbeing. I feel like sustainability and wellbeing would be a more useful direction to allow us to feel better as people. I'm looking at ways that we can influence that politically, either within politics or from a psychological point of view. I've had conversations with a few MPs over this and we have, provisionally, a room available in Westminster to be able to go there and open conversations. I'm hoping that we can start to expand and achieve some good.

Can you tell me about your involvement in the Political Psychology Section and why you wanted to become chair?

I have this deep interest in psychology and in politics, and that's driven by my passion to try to improve lives and improve wellbeing. I had joined the Political Psychology Committee because I wanted to have an impact, then I noticed the chair position was being advertised and thought I should try and put an application in. I'm very passionate, very keen and have the energy to do something with this. I'll be very dependent upon the expertise of the committee, and that's something which I spoke about in the interviews I had for the chair position – it'll be very much a collective of us working together towards these goals.

I'm very passionate about seeing some change. Maybe it is my naivety and not having the experience.

I am prepared to step forward and say, 'Hey, let's make a few mistakes', but we have to get out there, we have to start doing things, we have to start opening up conversations, we have to get into parliament and start holding them to account.

Recent events that we've seen in America have been very concerning for many people, and I've been looking at what we could do as a Society within the Political Psychology Section in reply to that. We have such a strong committee in the section, we've got some highly intellectual people and they're very motivated to try to improve things. We're looking at what we can do to reply to recent events and start to be a bit more forward and a bit more vocal, and get more involved in trying to change things for people's mental health and sustainability. I feel a real passion to try to do that and I think that's reflected in all of the committee and people around me.

Ethics is another area that's of great interest to me. Politicians feel they can't be too truthful in politics because then they won't get elected. I think that's just wrong. What can we do to try and challenge this? Ethics is so central to what we do as psychologists… how can we push this into the political arena in some way? I'd like to help bridge the gap between politicians and the general public so the public can understand where the misinformation is so they can understand what they're voting for. I think we're in a position to do this, I feel like as a section it's our responsibility to do that. People deserve better information.

Are there any other particularly pressing areas you'd like to get involved with in the section?

Politics is often viewed as a very small aspect of psychology, but I would say that politics, and political psychology, affects everybody. It's how much tax we pay, it's the schools that you put your children into, it's further education, it's our healthcare, finding a dentist, our pensions and when we retire, our emergency services and national security. I feel like every voting member of the public should be involved in it. Democracy is something we fought for… it's a privilege to have and has direct importance to us. I'm very aware of trying to get that message across.

We recently had a Political Psychology Section networking event at the BPS offices in London and had a lot of interesting professionals come to that. I am also trying to put together something to go out to the media to introduce myself and our Society. I'd like to do that on a fairly regular basis so the voting public can understand and trust what we're trying to achieve.