Liz Pollard

Hello and welcome to Somerville College. I work for the University Counselling Service and am also the designated Counsellor in this college on Wednesdays during term-time from 10.30am – 6.30pm.  You can contact me via email at college.counsellor@some.ox.ac.uk and find me in college in room Park 06.

If you wish to speak to me or another counsellor outside the college or on another day of the week you can contact the central counselling service at counselling@admin.ox.ac.uk

A bit about me

Having completed my first degree in English and Psychology, I enjoyed a riotous career as an advertising creative in 1980’s London.   During this hedonistic period I also worked for Central London Samaritans as a volunteer.  I then went on to train with mental health charity MIND and Barnado’s Support4Parents scheme.  Later I worked for 7 years as a counsellor at Child Bereavement UK supporting both adults and children learning to cope with the death of someone important to them. From 2013 I also worked as an honorary counsellor for two low cost services and in two schools in Oxfordshire.  More recently I have been working with patients in an Eating Disorder Unit using a range of therapeutic interventions including Psychodynamic counselling (my initial training modality) and DBT.  I currently supervise and work in private practice and as a counsellor at Oxford University.

My academic training was initially in Psychology and Arts at Leicester University and I subsequently gained a Post Graduate Diploma and Masters Degree in Psychodynamic Practice at University of Oxford. I now practice as a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor, Accredited by the UKCP and am a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).