Ghent University
Belgium
Professor Liesbet Goubert is Full Professor in the Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology at Ghent University, Belgium (www.ghplab.ugent.be). She completed her PhD in 2004, in which she focussed on the role of psychosocial risk factors for the development of chronic low back pain (e.g. fear, catastrophising). In the last decade, she shifted her main research focus to the investigation of interpersonal dynamics of (chronic) pain and chronic illness. She has published numerous studies on the role of others (e.g., parents, health care providers, partners) in the context of paediatric and adult pain. More recently, she became very interested in the study of psychosocial resilience mechanisms that may account for the sustainment of adaptive functioning and well-being in the presence of pain. In her research she makes use of a variety of methods, including diary, experimental, questionnaire, and observational methodology.
She developed, together with (inter)national colleagues, different theoretical models on the role of the social context in chronic conditions which have been published in high-impact journals (e.g., Goubert et al., PAIN, 2005; Hadjistavropoulos et al., Psychological Bulletin, 2011; Goubert et al., Journal of Pain, 2011; Simons et al., Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 2016) and books (e.g., Oxford Textbook of Paediatric Pain, Encyclopedia of Pain, The Social Neuroscience of Empathy). Her scholarly contributions have been recognised with several scientific awards, including the IASP-SIG Early Career Award in Pediatric Pain, the EFIC Grünenthal Grant Award for young scientists carrying out innovative clinical pain research, and the Prize "Institut Belge de la Douleur-UPSA-Belgisch Pijninstituut. In May 2017, she was invited to deliver the highly prestigious British Pain Society Annual Lecture at the 50th Anniversary Annual Scientific Meeting of the British Pain Society, and she received the British Pain Society Medal in recognition for her outstanding contributions to the clinical science of pain.
She has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Belgian Pain Society (Belgian IASP Chapter) from 2006-2012; since 2010 she is a member of the scientific committee of the Belgian Pain Society. Since 2008, she is an international collaborator of the Strategic Training Program on Pain in Child Health (PICH) of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Currently, she is the chair of the Scientific Program Committee of two international conferences: the 11th International Symposium on Pediatric Pain (July 2017, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) and the European Pediatric Psychology Conference (September 2018, Ghent, Belgium). Since 2014, she has been appointed as the academic secretary of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University.
