Meet Aimee

Read more about Aimee's story.

Aimee Cole is a first-class graduate of the University of Sussex’s School of Psychology. After completing her third-year placement with the National Literacy Trust, she continued working for their research team and was promoted to a full-time position as evaluation manager upon completing her degree. She’s particularly interested in the link between literacy engagement, environmental awareness and positive mental wellbeing.

“When I began my Psychology course at Sussex, I wasn’t at all sure where I wanted my degree to take me. My interests were broad, ranging from psychopathology to sports psychology. I also knew I wanted to work in a role where I felt I could make a positive contribution. But I just couldn’t picture how these interests could culminate in an interesting and appropriate job. I also experienced a lot of anxiety and couldn’t imagine feeling confident in an unfamiliar workplace. Little did I know that my placement at the National Literacy Trust would transform me from a nervous student into a confident, published researcher and conference presenter!

My professional placement sat within the research team of The National Literacy Trust, who conduct bespoke research in the field of literacy and conduct evaluations of literacy-related programmes. Working with the research team enabled me to strengthen the skills I had developed as part of my degree, including developing literature reviews and writing reports, but also brought about new skills including data analysis, and collecting evaluation data.

My final year dissertation examined the relationship between young people’s reading engagement and both their environmental awareness and pro-environmental action. Overall, data from 50,238 children and young people aged from 11 to 16 was included in the analysis. My research found that reading could act as a pathway to improving young people’s awareness of environmental issues and engagement in actions to protect the planet.”