Laureate of the CRCN Inserm competition, Ilaria will continue her research at the BPH in October 2025. Through the innovative CHILD-MHL and TEACH-MHE projects, she is helping to advance mental health literacy among children

After completing a Master’s degree in Communication Theories at the University of Florence in Italy, Ilaria Montagni obtained her Europaeus Doctorate in Psychological and Psychiatric Sciences at the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health at the University of Verona, and at the Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health at Sorbonne University. Her thesis focused on the role of Information and Communication Sciences in the field of mental health, based on quantitative and qualitative studies conducted in nine European countries.

She joined Bordeaux Population Health U1219 as a postdoctoral researcher to contribute to the i-Share study on the health of more than 20,000 students, led by Prof. Christophe Tzourio. Her skills in humanities and social sciences were essential in designing and evaluating tools aimed at promoting students’ mental well-being.

Since her PhD, her research has focused on mental health literacy, which is all about knowledge and beliefs around mental health, from how it’s defined to access to care. Ilaria Montagni describes her research as interventional and participatory, based on mixed methods. She’s been involved in a bunch of different projects:

• • • She was the principal investigator for the servi-Share project, dedicated to the creation of an interactive map illustrating mental health services for students in Bordeaux. : https://tasantecarte.fr  

• • • She has also participated in the evaluation of other communication tools for students, such as an interactive video on depression and suicide risk on YouTube, the Mental Health First Aid programme, and a communication campaign by Santé publique France on substance abuse. 

• • • More recently, she obtained funding from the ANR to co-develop and evaluate an Escape Game on student mental health, in partnership with a start-up. Her projects involve several national and international partners, both public and private, from a variety of disciplines.

After a contract as a teacher-researcher at Isped for the Graduate Program in Digital Public Health, under the supervision of Rodolphe Thiebaut, Ilaria passed the Inserm CRCN competitive examination in 2025.
She will continue her research on children’s mental health literacy through the CHILD-MHL and TEACH-MHE projects, which aim to improve mental health knowledge among children and their teachers in schools. Funded by IReSP, Santé publique France, the University of Bordeaux and AUF//Collectif, these two projects involve the co-creation, between children and teachers, of a programme for CM1 and CM2 classes in the Bordeaux metropolitan area, as well as online training for students preparing for a career as school teachers at the University of Bordeaux. To evaluate the effectiveness of these interventions, two scales will be developed and validated according to psychometric principles.