Research expertise
Health and Social Care research students will lead in-depth advanced research projects that have significant impact on their specific field of study, and society more widely. We have a diverse, multidisciplinary and interprofessional postgraduate research community of academics and health and social care practitioners, including the Association for Dementia Studies.
Our research and knowledge exchange (RKE) enhances lives – making them better, safer and healthier within our communities and beyond. We are an inclusive and collaborative research community, actively engaging students and colleagues across disciplines. Our work is deeply connected to the people it serves, valuing the insights from those with lived experience as essential contributors. We are committed to producing high quality, purposeful and impactful RKE and we take pride in celebrating our shared achievements and progress.
Students join our research community that brings together researchers with diverse expertise across Health and Social Care, including these specialist topics that research students can focus on:
- Social work and policy
- Allied health studies, including physiotherapy and occupational therapy
- Dementia care
- Public health
- Safeguarding
- Mental health
- Health inequalities
- Long term conditions
- Criminology
- Violence prevention
Working under the careful supervision of experienced researchers, postgraduate research students will explore key national and internal issues that impact a range of health and social care practices, policies, interventions and professionals. Postgraduate research students are encouraged to apply person-centred and community focused perspectives to address pressing contemporary challenges in health and social care. Creating new knowledge about how we can better understand and respond in new ways to these challenges are themes that characterise the work of our postgraduate research students, including:
- Relational practice and gender dynamics in social work
- Stigma, identity, lived experience, and working with underserved communities in health and social care
- Domestic violence, abuse and survivorship
- Living with dementia, community-based support, dementia care scaling, stigma and inclusive living environments
We also have links with national and international industry, and government and NGO environmental, and health groups and agencies. Where possible we support students to collaborate with these organisations to enhance the relevance and application of their research.
Research supervisors
Allied Health
Professor Eleanor Bradley
Expertise: adult mental health; medicines conversations (information-exchange, concordance); family input and support (shared decision making, coproduction); non-medical prescribing; qualitative research; health psychology.
Dr Helen Frank
Expertise: student experience, disability, practice education and pedagogy; qualitative methodologies.
Dr Katherine Gordon-Smith
Expertise: comorbidities (physical and psychiatric) of major mood disorders; quantitative methods, longitudinal mood measures in bipolar disorder.
Professor Lisa Jones
Expertise: aetiology of major mood disorders (including bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis); quantitative methods, longitudinal measures in major mood disorders.
Dr Dez Kyte
Expertise: physiotherapy: musculoskeletal conditions of the upper and lower limb, Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROMs): development, validation, routine symptom monitoring, clinical trials.
Dr Kostas Papadopoulos
Expertise: Musculoskeletal Conditions of Upper and Lower Limb; Validation and Cultural adaption of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures; Sports Injuries.
Dr Catharine Rose
Expertise: Participatory research, application of theory of change to evaluation and research, qualitative methods, health inequalities in communities
Dementia Studies
Dr Julie Barrett
Expertise: Housing and dementia; nature-based/green dementia care; pet assisted therapy; walking with purpose; dementia-related stigma; intergenerational practice; inclusive design; co-production, qualitative research. Research Co-ordinator for the Housing and Dementia Research Consortium (HDRC), facilitating access to housing and care providers, research sites and participants.
Professor Eleanor Bradley
Expertise: adult mental health; family input and support; coproduction; health inequalities; health psychology; qualitative research.
Dr Shirley Evans
Expertise: dementia research; post-diagnostic support; technology and inclusion; lifelong learning. Research methodological experience with realist review and evaluation; phenomenological approaches; user involvement and action research.
Dr Catrin Hedd Jones
Expertise: dementia and post-diagnostic support; education, intergenerational; coproduction; minority experiences, action research facilitation.
Dr Mary O’Malley
Expertise: Supportive environmental design for people with dementia; wayfinding and dementia; the needs of younger people living with dementia; co-designing with people with dementia; qualitative research.
Dr Chris Russell
Expertise: the social citizenship of people living with dementia; experiences and meanings of leisure and physical activity; the application of dementia learning and teaching into practice; experiential research methods – for example go-along interviews and observations.
Dr Ruby Swift
Expertise: music/arts and dementia; post-diagnostic dementia support. Research methodological experience with Goethean Science/Gentle Empiricism; phenomenological approaches; arts-based approaches; realist evaluation; sensory ethnography; and action research.
Occupational Therapy
Professor Eleanor Bradley
Expertise: adult mental health; medicines conversations (information-exchange, concordance); family input and support (shared decision making, coproduction); non-medical prescribing; qualitative research; health psychology.
Sophie Knight
Research specialisms: People’s experiences of everyday occupations, design for disability, universal and inclusive design, quantitative, creative research methods
Physiotherapy
Dr Helen Frank
Expertise: student experience, disability, practice education and pedagogy; qualitative methodologies
Dr Pauline Kuithan
Expertise: exercise and pain sensitivity in people with chronic low back pain.
Dr Dez Kyte
Expertise: physiotherapy: musculoskeletal conditions of the upper and lower limb, Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROMs): development, validation, routine symptom monitoring, clinical trials.
Dr Kostas Papadopoulos
Expertise: musculoskeletal conditions of upper and lower limb; validation and cultural adaptation of patient-reported outcome measures; sports injuries.
Social Work and Social Policy
Dr Peter Ayling
Expertise: Children and families social work, children and young peoples mental health, creative therapies and counselling
Dr Clive Sealey
Expertise: social policy; poverty; policy analysis; comparative policy analysis; qualitative research methods.
Dr Peter Unwin
Expertise: safeguarding and child sexual exploitation; fostering; privatisation/agency social work; service user/carer involvement.
Dr Raluca Sarbu
Expertise: qualitative research in social work, children safeguarding, fostering, roma/gypsy communities, intervention methods in social work.
Research groups
Postgraduate Research Students are encouraged to join Research Groups at the University, and those with significant focus on health and social care include: