Emma has a BSc Psychology from Queen's University Belfast, and was awarded a MSc in Psychiatric Research at the IoPPN, King's College London. 

She has experience working as a research assistant for dementia-related projects at South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust which led to a role managing the Clinical Trial Unit of Psychiatry of Old Age and Neuropsychiatry (CTIMP/non-CTIMP). Emma has also worked in the Biomedical Research Centre at The Maudsley on industry collaborative research projects using electronic health records to identify service-users with treatment-resistant schizophrenia, and treatment-resistant depression.

Following these research assistant roles, she successfully competed for a Medical Research Council studentship to undertake her doctoral training at University College London. For her PhD, Emma is using a genetically informed approach to understand objective and subjective experiences and their associations with health outcomes. She is supervised at the CMAP Lab by Professor Jean-Baptiste Pingault and Dr Jessie Baldwin.