Professor at Queen Margaret University and co-director of Health Design Collective Social Enterprise focussed on co-design and community. I have a background in Physiotherapy and early in my career I moved into research and development. I can advise on different routes into both. I started by focusing on using audit, service evaluation and research to advocate for people who are living with different long-term health conditions and for the people in their lives – families and informal carers. I have worked with people living with the impacts of breast cancer and its treatment, stroke, multiple sclerosis and renal disease. More recently, my time has been focused more specifically on experiences of living with and using devices for foot-drop from different causes.
I take a pragmatic approach and use various quantitative and qualitative methods to ask and answer questions from different perspectives. I have taught Research Methods at all levels for most of my career and so am familiar with different research designs, but I am most confident in using survey and qualitative research methods, as well as realist approaches. I have experience of ethical and governance approvals as well as ways of working with third sector organisations. As well as these topics, I can also provide mentoring in relation to Doctoral studies and supervision.
I am Chair of my Higher Education Institution’s Enterprise and Innovation Network and believe strongly in the importance of ensuring rapid impact from research through innovative, enterprising and entrepreneurial thinking and approaches. My research interests led to collaboration with others to form a spin-out social enterprise called the ‘Health Design Collective.’ We have been successful in gaining a NIHR invention for innovation (i4i) grant focusing on developing footwear for footdrop. I would be very happy to discuss possible ways of innovating from / commercialising ideas from practice and/or research, as well as on funding sources and grant applications.
I can also mentor/advise in relation to managing career progression while balancing parental responsibilities and managing return to work after maternity leave.