Birkbeck has been at the forefront of work to improve the quality of life for women with breast cancer through evidence-based research into the best ways to reduce anxiety and depression. 

Professor Nazanin Derakhshan led this work through Birkbeck’s Building Resilience in Breast Cancer (BRiC) Research Centre until recently, a centre she founded in 2015 after her own diagnosis of breast cancer. The Centre has helped many women who have been in direct contact with it to address some of the emotional challenges of breast cancer, and it has also reached thousands more indirectly through an ever-growing community of breast cancer survivors who have benefited from the Centre’s immensely influential research and continue to build their own mutually-supportive networks.