Personal statement

I am a Lecturer in Social Policy and my research on health inequalities focusses on the social determinants of health. My recent work has centred on housing, but more broadly my expertise is on the impacts of poverty, as well as processes of social and economic change, on health across the lifecourse. This includes examining the impacts of historical processes of socio-economic change, such as late 20^th century deindustrialisation, as well as more recent periods of fiscal austerity, on intergenerational and place-based health inequalities. I am a qualitative researcher with expertise in participatory and creative methods.

I co-lead our MSc in Public Health and Social Innovation, as well as our placement-based Dissertations, in which our Masters students carry out applied research at policy and third sector organisations. I supervise PhD and Masters students undertaking research on the social determinants of health, particularly where they use participatory research methods or focus on housing.

I am Associate Director for Participatory Research at the Centre for Health Policy. Here, I organise our Community Research Cafes, which are funded by the Social Policy Association. The cafes provide an informal space for staff or volunteers at community-led organisations to chat about and troubleshoot their own research projects with experienced academics. I also lead a short course for community-based peer researchers, which will be launching at the University of Strathclyde in September 2026.

I have a particular interest in research methods that encourage and enable participants to share and critically reflect on their experiences through research, both individually and collectively. This includes using participatory methods as part of more traditional research study designs, as well as in community-led action research. I have worked extensively with community and third sector organisations to design and deliver action-orientated research and evaluation on a range of social determinants of health.

I am currently working with the Big Noise to evaluate the impacts of their orchestral music programme on children and young people's health and wellbeing, using participatory systems mapping and the SIPHER Layered Systems Map tool. This is a web application that I helped to develop as part of my work in the SIPHER consortium, which focussed on the role of lived experience and qualitative public health evidence in understanding the impacts of housing on health. The tool helps to visually present complex qualitative data, with a focus on causal pathways. I am also using this tool in a participatory systems mapping research project with Scottish local authorities, on the impacts of housing policy implementation on health, as part of the Scottish Health Equity Research Unit.

A significant focus of my more recent work has been exploring the type and nature of evidence needed by policy decision-makers to intervene in the pathways between various social determinants of health and heath inequalities. This has involved working in partnership with various levels of government across the UK, as part of both SIPHER and the Policy Modelling for Health research consortia. I am particularly interested in the ways in which qualitative research evidence can be effectively incorporated into policy decision-making processes and the impact this has on research participants (both through policy and the research itself). This is part of a broader interest in the role of evidence, and especially non-traditional and innovative evidence forms, in policymaking on ‘wicked’ or intractable problems.

Before coming to the University of Strathclyde, I worked at Glasgow Centre for Population Health for over ten years, where I carried out participatory, peer-led and policy-facing research on the social determinants of health. Prior to this, I worked for a community-led organisation in Clydebank.