My background is in Public Health, Health Promotion and Health Services Research. My research interests include sexual and reproductive health, digital health interventions at the interface with patients and the public (for health promotion and healthcare delivery), the development and evaluation of complex interventions, and the patient experience of long-term conditions. I've recently started working on gambling and gambling harms, a newly-recognised public health priority.

I use a wide range of methods and methodological approaches in my research. I enjoy inter-disciplinary, collaborative and impactful research, particularly applied research with NHS and social care, and the community and voluntary sector. I'm experienced in co-ordinating multi-institutional research projects.

Current and recent projects include:

East Sussex County Council Research Collaboration Hub grant (2024-2025, extended to 2027), including a project exploring the impact of creative activities on parents' wellbeing, and work to build and support the Council's health research capacity.

Brighton & Hove's Health Counts 2024 Survey. Co-led the design and set-up (before maternity leave) of this city-wide decennial survey, the data from which informs Public Health, NHS and wider service planning in the City. Analyses are ongoing.

Systematic reviews of interactive digital interventions for sexual health promotion and HIV prevention (at UCL)

Completed projects (since joining the University of Brighton)

Health Systems Analysis of Barriers and Readiness of Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) Services in COVID-19 affected areas. I was a collaborator and researcher on this WHO-funded international study. Findings are being published in a special issue in the journal Reproductive Health.

RISE (knowledge exchange) project with MyCareMatters CIC. Led desk-based and community stakeholder consultative work to refine and improve resources to support person-centred care for older people, and My Future Care booklet to support Advance Care Planning. Developed internal evaluation processes.

MHealth (mobile health) for relationship care (partnerships in the pandemic, and research on the Paired app) with collaborators at the Open University, University of Bradford, University College London, and City St George's University of London (see publications).

Living Well with Frailty Experiences (LiFE) Study (co-designing person-centred frailty interventions with community-dwelling older people and health professionals), a collaboration between Brighton, De Montfort and Birmingham City universities - I co-ordinated this study, funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing.

Experiences of living with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and receiving services in Sussex.

An investigation of the use of simulated training to enhance clinical leadership skills within the residential care sector - funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing.

Investigating ethnic inequalities in sexually transmitted infections (at the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit for Blood-Borne and Sexually Transmitted Infections - UCL & Public Health England).

I'm able to supervise students in a range of areas, across population health, health promotion and healthcare delivery. I have particular interests in the following areas:

• sexual and reproductive health (broadly conceived, i.e. inclusive of sexual wellbeing, STI/HIV prevention and/or contraception);
• e-health / digital health (including AI interventions), with patients and the public;
• development and/or evaluation of behaviour change interventions in health;
• breastfeeding and infant feeding;
• the lived experience of having (or growing up with) long-term conditions, e.g. motor neurone disease, frailty, type 1 diabetes.

As a mixed methods researcher, I can supervise postgraduate students who are working on mixed methods, qualitative and/or quantitative research (e.g survey-based or epidemiological studies).

I am available to take on new postgraduate research (PGR) students (PhD, MD), who can get in touch with an outline research proposal which we could develop further into a PhD proposal (subject to funding).

I teach research methods to students on a diverse range of health degrees. Health research is the main part of my job at the university and it's my passion - so I bring this enthusiasm to my teaching. Alongside explaining the philosophical and technical aspects of methodology and methods, I seek to de-mystify research with examples from students' areas of practice, and to give students a sense of what it is like to use various methods. In so doing, I aim to build my students' confidence in appraising evidence for practice, and enable them to do their own research in their dissertations, research placements, and (for those who want to) after graduation. I aim to be responsive to learners' needs and motivations, and for this reason I particularly enjoy small group teaching and research supervision. I have an Advance HE Fellowship (FHEA). 

My research supervision includes: postgraduate researchers (PhD or MD students), MSc dissertation projects, and research placements - undertaken by some students on taught courses (BSc, MSc) who health research through practice: getting involved with an ongoing research study or analysing an existing dataset.

Before my research career began, I trained students in transferable skills ('soft skills'), to increase their personal effectiveness and employability after graduation. This was through a programme run by the University of London Union and the National Union of Students' (NUS) National Student Learning Programme. Skills included leadership, communications skills, team-building, presentation skills and public speaking, assertiveness, chairing and minuting meetings - and 'Training the Trainer' (training colleagues to train others). The learner-centred, responsive and participatory approach of training (vs. teaching) influences my teaching practice. I can offer transferable skills development as part of my PGR supervision and research mentoring.

Before joining the University of Brighton, I did my PhD under the supervision of Prof Dame Anne Johnson, and Profs Claudia Estcourt, Cath Mercer and Maryam Shahmanesh, at the Centre for Population Research in Sexual Health and HIV, UCL Institute of Global Health. My PhD was attached to the award-winning public health workstream of a multi-institutional and multidisciplinary research programme, Electronic Self-Testing Instruments for STI Control (eSTI²). Whilst completing and publishing from my PhD, I worked for the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit on Blood Borne and Sexually Transmitted Infections (for Public Health England and UCL), analysing biobehavioural survey data and completing a systematic review, and this work overlapped with joining the University of Brighton. 

My pre-doctoral research experience began in 2002, and included roles at London's Institute of Education (now part of UCL), the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM, where also I did my MSc in Public Health: Health Promotion). Through casual and short-term research roles I built up a wide range of research methods and practical data collection experience, working on research projects on a diverse applied health research topics (e.g. infant crying behaviour and parental care; childhood obesity; sexual health and HIV service planning in the London Borough of Camden; health promotion in schools). Having gained research project management skills on-the-job (by 'acting up' and by completing research projects where colleagues had moved on to other roles), I gained more secure research employment at UCL in 2008, as the study co-ordinator of a Medical Research Council funded study to explore the optimal combination of primary care and specialist sexual health clinical services to meet the needs of local populations. Whilst fulfilling this role, I worked on the development of the Natsal-3 survey (Britain's national survey of sexual attitudes and lifestyles, which I later analysed), co-authored a Cochrane systematic review, and discovered a love of writing and communicating research findings to academic and public health / clinical practice audiences. By this stage, doing a PhD was the obvious next step.

Since joining the University of Brighton, the range of research topics and methods that I use has broadened out (again!). Having previously mostly worked in university Research Units and Research Departments, I've taken the opportunity to develop my teaching and supervisory experience at our teaching-intensive university. I maintain collaborations with former colleagues, and enjoy living on the south coast.