Dr Gabriela Roman

Profile 

Gabriela Roman holds an MPhil in Criminological Research and a PhD in Developmental Psychology, both awarded by the University of Cambridge. Her research lies at the intersection of affective and cognitive science, with a focus on self-referential and arousal-modulated cognitions, and their implications for mental health and behaviour. 

The Witnessed Self Theory 

Dr. Roman created the Witnessed Self Theory, a tethering-and-regulation account of the cognitive-affective system through which people enact, monitor, and defend who they mean to be. At its centre is a previously untheorised process, self-witnessing: the ambient, pre-reflective registering of oneself enacting one’s desired self. The theory specifies five processes, fourteen modulators, and three system features (malleability, fragility, and (de)coherence) (Roman, 2026; preprint, PsyArXiv). 

The Method of Cascades 

Dr. Roman created the Method of Cascades, a methodological framework for studying experience as it unfolds. The method deconstructs the experiential process into simultaneously recorded streams — cognitions, physiological arousal, brain patterns, and behaviour — and analyses their moment-to-moment sequencing through lag-sequential analysis, rough paths and signature analysis, and structural equation modelling, distinguishing the momentary causality operating within cascades from the gestalt effects that arise as cascades are integrated over time (Roman, 2022; PsyArXiv/ y3unh_v3; www.methodofcascades.com). 

Main Research Projects 

Peer bonds and behaviour co-production in virtual reality (with A. A. Petrut). The first empirical application of the Method of Cascades in a peer influence context: 100 adolescent friendship dyads (aged 17–19) complete naturalistic virtual reality tasks while their behaviours and verbalisations are coded and sequentially analysed, to examine how the affiliative reward carried by peer bonds shapes real-time compliance, contingent responding, and the co-production of behaviour — and whether in-VR dynamics and self-concept characteristics predict real-life behaviour. The protocol is pre-registered at JMIR Research Protocols (Roman & Petrut). Funded by the Cambridge Humanities Research Grants scheme (Tier 2). 

From Care to Confidence (CEYP). In partnership with the Drive Forward Foundation, this project develops and trials a cognitive-affective toolkit to support psychological resilience in care-experienced young people (CEYP), targeting four capacities that early adversity undermines: self-concept clarity, self-compassion, autobiographical narrative coherence, and emotion regulation. The toolkit is calibrated through a survey and focus groups, and its efficacy is tested in a randomised controlled trial. Funded by the Cambridge Humanities Research Grants scheme (Tier 2). 

Trustbridge-VR. Currently put forth for funding is Trustbridge-VR — her programme on rebuilding police–citizen trust through virtual reality, fNIRS neuroimaging, and the Method of Cascades — is built with the London Metropolitan Police Public and Personal Safety Unit, who co-design its police training intervention; with the VR industry partner Operator XR; and with the youth charity Drive Forward Foundation, through which a dedicated strand extends the work to care-experienced young people. 

Life Events and Weapon Carrying. Also put forth for funding is the REACT project — co-led with the Home Office Crime Analysis Unit — which mobilises the PADS+ longitudinal cohort to deliver rapid evidence on when, and why, young people move into and out of weapon carrying, co-producing outputs for Home Office policy teams, Violence Reduction Units, and the Knife-Enabled Robbery Taskforce in support of the Government’s Plan to Halve Knife Crime.  

Teaching 

Dr. Roman currently convene the Criminological Theories course on the Institute’s MPhil in Criminology, lecture on developmental theories of crime for the MPhil and MSt programmes, and deliver lectures, marking and supervisions for the Institute’s MSt in Applied Criminology, Penology and Management. She has cbeen teaching longitudinal structural equation modelling to academics and researchers since 2013: mpluswizard.com; mpluscambridge.com.