Professor Gerry Leavey took up the post of Director of the Bamford Centre at Ulster University in September 2012.  He is Deputy Director of the ADR-Ni and Co-Lead for the NI Clinical Research Network -Mental Health.  Prior to this, he was the Director of Research for Barnet, Enfield & Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust and a researcher in the Department of Mental Health Sciences, University College London.  As a social worker he spent several years with Jewish Care, working with Holocaust survivors. His research career has focussed on mental health services. He has published widely on service pathways and access by minority ethnic, migrant and disadvantaged populations. His work ranges from epidemiological studies on ethnic elders and refugee children to qualitative investigations of community level agencies such as schools and faith based organisations, and their role in the recognition and management of mental illness. He is the lead on a EU funded project on the use of intergenerational exchange to combat social exclusion in rural and isolated regions of Europe.