Advisory Group on Early Years, and in this capacity hosted a visit by the Duchess of Cambridge to UCL in 2018. Research McCrory is best known for his work on childhood adversity, maltreatment and the brain. He is interested in why mental health problems develop, and has investigated how childhood trauma can impact brain structure and function in ways that may lead to an increased risk of later psychiatric disorder. He has argued that alterations in brain structure and function, associated with childhood maltreatment, may in part represent adaptation to early dangerous or unpredictable environments. In his theory of Latent Vulnerability, developed with Essi Viding, he argues that while neurocognitive adaptations may confer benefits for the child in early adverse environments they can create increased vulnerability in the longer term, as the child becomes less well equipped to successfully negotiate more normative environments and developmental challenges. His research has documented altered functioning in an array of neurocognitive systems, including the threat, reward and autobiographical memory systems. McCrory’s call for a greater focus on preventative approaches to child mental health has in part been informed by his finding that altered brain functioning following trauma is observable even before mental health problems emerge. He has recently argued for the importance of viewing the brain as a social organ, claiming that mental health vulnerability following childhood maltreatment can in part be understood as a socially mediated process. Selected articles McCrory, E. J., De Brito, S. A., Sebastian, C. L., Mechelli, A., Bird, G., Kelly, P. A., Viding, E. (2011). Heightened neural reactivity to threat in child victims of family violence. Current Biology 21(23), R947-R948. McCrory, E.J., Gerin, M.I. and Viding, E., 2017. Annual Research Review: Childhood maltreatment, latent vulnerability and the shift to preventative psychiatry–the contribution of functional brain imaging. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 58(4), pp. 338–357. McCrory, E.J., Puetz, V.B., Maguire, E.A., Mechelli, A., Palmer, A., Gerin, M.I., Kelly, P.A., Koutoufa, I. and Viding, E., 2017. Autobiographical memory: a candidate latent vulnerability mechanism for psychiatric disorder following childhood maltreatment. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 212(4) 216-222. References Living people Alumni of the University of Cambridge Alumni of King's College London Alumni of University College London Year of birth missing (living people) British psychologists