Dr Charlotte Blease is a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Queen’s University, Belfast. Her PhD (2008) was entitled ‘Paul Churchland’s Arguments for Eliminative Materialism’. Her subsequent research is focused on philosophy of medicine (including psychiatry) and medical ethics. She is driven by the possibility of applying philosophical (and, in a multi-disciplinary context, empirical tools) to solving practical problems. For example, if we ask the question: “Why do people (including doctors) have a tendency to stigmatise people with mental health problems?” we need to try to explain the stigmatisation by investigating how the mind works: this involves cognitive science. Recent papers (2012) include: ‘Mental Health Illiteracy? The Unnaturalness of Perceiving Depression as a Disorder’. Review of General Psychology 16(1): 59-69; and ‘The Principle of Parity: The Placebo and Physician Communication’. Journal of Medical Ethics 38(4):199-203. Her research at Bochum will be concerned with explaining how (and why) depressive responses may be triggered by certain ‘cultural’ phenomena (such as social networking sites and advertising).