Alice Shires

Alice Shires is a Clinical Psychologist based at the University of New South Wales, where she has been the Director of the Psychology Clinic for several years. Prior to this position, she worked as Clinic Manager at The University of Sydney and as Consultant Clinical Psychologist in acute and specialist mental health services in the UK. She has been involved in the teaching, training and supervision of clinical psychologists and their field supervisors for many years.

 Alice was the Chair of the NSW Section of the APS Clinical College from 2006 to 2010 and is currently a University representative on the Psychology Advisory Committee for the NSW Department of Health.

 Alice has developed a keen interest in Mindfulness and its integration into CBT as a response to increasing frustration and awareness of the limitations of standard CBT. After attending ACT training with Stephen Hayes and MiCBT training with Bruno Cayoun, Alice set up some training courses given by Bruno Cayoun for both students and supervisors at UNSW. These workshops also provided data for some research on the effects of MiCBT training on clinicians.

Since the start of 2007, Alice has implemented MiCBT with clients, taught MiCBT to professionals and supervised clinicians in training. She has been hosting a Mindfulness interest group for clinicians who are interested in the application of Mindfulness in Psychological therapy. Alice is particularly interested in establishing an accreditation process to support high standards of content and training, and has been involved in the MiCBT Vocational Graduate Diploma course construction.

She is currently undertaking a PhD research project in cognitive neuroscience under the supervision of Professor Louise Sharpe (USYD), investigating the possible effects of mindfulness training on the hippocampus of Multiple Sclerosis sufferers.