Dr Ashley Brown completed her first class honours undergraduate degree at Converse University in the USA before moving to London in 2017 where she completed her PhD at King's in 2021.

Dr Brown's PhD, supervised by Dr Qazi Rahman and Dr Edward D. Barker, was titled ‘The Classification of Sexual Interests and Their Psychological Correlates’. This involved using novel psychometric techniques to evaluate the organisation of sexual fantasies and behaviours, investigations of lesser-known paraphilic interest domains (e.g., erotic target identity inversions), and the experience of minority stress in sexual minority groups.

Alongside her PhD, she provided statistical assistance for the SHRINE project (funded by GSTT Charity), working to increase access to King's Health Partners sexual health services for vulnerable groups.

She is also involved in teaching on the Psychology BSc, iBSc, and the Health Psychology MSc and obtained Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) in January 2021. She is currently a post-doctoral research associate, helping to lead the PIMS project (funded by the NIHR), which focuses on psychological interventions for sexual difficulties in Multiple Sclerosis.

Clinically, Dr Brown works as a counsellor at cliniQ, a clinic for trans, nonbinary, and gender diverse people that works in partnership with King’s College Hospital

Research interests

• Sexuality in LTCs
• Paraphilias
• Sexual and gender minority groups
• Clinical psychology and psychosexual services
• Psychometric assessment and scale development
• Developing and evaluating interventions for sex and relationship related difficulties

Teaching

• Research Methods and Statistics
• Development of Sexuality and Gender Identity
• Clinical Psychology
• Neuropsychology

Expertise and public engagement

• Talks for NHS sexual health staff about working with gender and sexual minority service users
• Work with cliniQ on development and implementation of wellbeing group programmes
• Public engagement lectures for findings from PhD