Research Interests

• measuring, valuing, and modelling health, and other aspects of well-being
• incorporating equity concerns into social welfare functions
• normative economics of health and beyond

Research Interests

• Economic evaluation including alongside clinical trials and decision modelling
• Analysis of patient level data, particularly around health utilities
• Social values and decision making, including equity and procedural preferences

Jesse’s research focuses in applied micro-econometrics, with contributions to public, labour and health economics. His research agenda focuses on understanding, and empirically identifying, the influence that economic and social environment have on individual choice.

Recent examples include a large randomised field experiment, run with a UK Police Force, which found that improving the access to public support services for victims of domestic violence leads to more efficient use of police resources. He also has a series of projects that measure the effect of social environment on individual decision making in the context of smoking, marital decisions, and raising children.

Jesse is interested in supervising PhD students working in applied micro-econometrics. Specifically, he is interested in three areas: estimating social interactions and social spill-overs; the economics of health, particularly with respect to individual choice; and urban sorting and amenities.

Research Interests

My fundamental interest is in mathematical modelling approaches to inform decision making in health and healthcare.

I am currently principal investigator or co-investigator involved in over 19 research programmes and projects. Current government / national policy research.

Alcohol Policy

I have been involved in modelling alcohol behaviours and policy since 2008, when we began a programme of research for UK research bodies and policy makers. With Prof Meier, we have developed the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group, a leading international centre for alcohol policy and epidemiological modelling research. Our work has influenced government policy on minimum unit pricing for alcohol; shaping and informing policy in UK, Scotland, Canada, Wales, EU Commission, and Republic of Ireland.

Public Health - Health Economics and Decision Modelling

I am co-applicant (Health Economics and Decision Modelling leader) on large research grants for the NIHR School of Public health research and the ESRC funded UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies.

I have a wider portfolio of public health work including work around screening and prevention of diabetes, linking smoking and alcohol behaviours and developing a joint smoking and alcohol policy analysis model, encouraging behaviours in physical activity and general lifestyle risk reductions. This entire programme relates to the central methodological interest which is in developing and using novel mathematical modelling approaches to support and inform decision making around health and healthcare for international impact.

Health Technology Assessment

I have been heavily involved in health technology assessment and health economic evaluation of pharmaceuticals and interventions for both government bodies in the UK eg NICE and internationally, and also with the pharmaceutical industry.

I direct a programme of research in Health Economic Modelling / Health Technology Assessment which involves a large team of modelling staff and their collaborators. We are recognized as a leading national and international centre for HTA modelling research. I have been involved in direct leadership of over 30 research projects within the last five years, working closely with ScHARR-TAG and DSU.

Chiara ‘s research is in Applied Microeconometrics and lies at the intersection of Labor Economics, Health Economics, and Public Economics. Chiara studies the behaviour of individuals, firms, and governments, and her research tries to understand intended and unintended effects of public policies, effects of innovation, issues relevant for the design of markets, inequality, consumer response to information, and the transmission of human capital.

Chiara is interested in supervising dissertations in Applied Microeconometrics, especially on topics related to the production of health and impact of healthcare policies.

Broad area of interest:

Research methods I am able to supervise:

Research Interests

• Systematic review and evidence synthesis of medical, health and social science topics, including qualitative and mixed method evidence synthesis
• The Health Technology Assessment (HTA) process
• Information retrieval and programme evaluation (implementation fidelity) research

Research interests

• The use of statistics in health economics
• Extrapolation and time-series analyses
• Survival analysis and model uncertainty
• Vascular disease, cancer, depression
• Chronic diseases, mental ill health, and their interactions
• The use of health economics for pathway (service) re-design
• Mathematical modelling, including simulation

Research Interests

* Modelling in public health

* Modelling in cancer and cancer screening

* Methodological modelling interests including:

• the modelling process and errors in HTA models
• cognitive mapping for systematic reviews in complex settings
• structural uncertainty in models
• Bayesian analysis of joint disease natural history and test characteristics in screening
• value of information methods
• probabilistic sensitivity analysis methods
• meta modelling
• information gathering processes for models

My current interests are in the use of routinely collected care data for the purpose of costing analysis, economic analysis and decision modelling. I also have an interest in the capability-approach and extra-wefarism and its conceptual and practical application to economic evaluations and decision making, and the conceptual and practical use of outcome measures in general.

I can supervise students interested in the use of large databases of rountinely collected care data for health economic analysis and decision modelling problems. These databases include, but are not limited to:

• Secondary Uses Service (SUS)
• Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)
• Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD)
• ResearchOne

My broad research is focused on mathematical modelling within health economics. I have gained significant expertise and experience in two related areas:

• Bayesian calibration of cancer natural history models: This is my main methodological research theme, please see MDM publication http://mdm.sagepub.com/content/31/4/625 and Example Excel model using the Metropolis Hastings algorithm to calibrate a state transition model available to down load from the Downloads box)
• Early diagnosis of cancer: I have substantial experience having worked on more than 15 projects in this area of applied research.
• In addition to these main research themes I have undertaken research to inform policy making: Health Technology Assessment (HTA) for NICE (https://www.shef.ac.uk/scharr/sections/heds/collaborations/tag) , and research as part of the Policy Research Unit in Economic Evaluation of Health and Care Interventions (EEPRU) for DH (http://www.eepru.org.uk/)

hilip (Phil) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Sheffield Centre for Health and Related Research (SCHARR). He has a background in Psychology, Economics, and Health Outcomes research and is a mixed-methods researcher, with combined expertise in quantitative, qualitative, and experimental research methods.

Phil’s research interests include:

• Measuring and valuing health-related quality of life (HRQoL) across different health conditions.
• Measuring and valuing HRQoL in children and in rare diseases.
• Developing, evaluating, and modifying patient reported outcome measures (PROMs).
• Methodological (including normative and ethical) issues in the valuation of health states.

He is available to supervise students in these and related areas.

Dr Andrew Burlinson joined University of Sheffield’s Department of Economics as Lecturer in September 2023, and is a member of the Sheffield Urban, International Trade and Environmental Economics (SUITE) group and the Centre for Competition Policy (CCP). 

Andrew joined Sheffield following his Lectureship in Energy Economics at the University of East Anglia (NBS). Before joining UEA he returned to the University of Warwick as a teaching fellow in the Department of Economics, following postdoctoral research associate roles in Loughborough University's School of Business and Economics.

Andrew holds a PhD at Warwick Business School (Economic Modelling and Forecasting Group) - funded by Ofgem’s Low Carbon Network Fund. He was awarded a distinction in Economics (MSc) at the University of Nottingham and a first-class hons degree in Economics (BSc) at Newcastle University/University of Groningen.

Dr Andrew Burlinson has published in international peer-reviewed journals including, Research Policy, Social Science and Medicine, and Energy Economics. He has worked on several projects funded by UKERC, Ofgem, EPSRC and CERRE.

Andrew is embedded in the current policy and research areas of consumer decision-making on the adoption of energy efficient and renewable technologies, and inequality within energy markets, with a focus on the deleterious effects of poverty on health, wellbeing, and healthy eating, as well as the resilience of households to high energy prices.

Andrew has contributed to policy discussions and roundtables with leading experts and practitioners, including the APPG on Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency, the Westminster Energy, Environment and Transport Forum, Ofgem and National Energy Action.

His findings have received national (e.g., BBC Radio, Daily Mail, ITV, The Sun) and global interest (Africa, Asia, Europe, and America), as well as featured in Understanding Society's Insights Report, National Energy Action's 2023 Fuel Poverty Monitor, and Nottingham City Council’s Fuel Poverty Strategy (2018-2025).

My Research interests

I have three related research interests that fall under the general banner of Uncertainty Quantification: (1) how do we properly account for all relevant uncertainties when we build a computer model of a physical, biological or social system? (2) how do we (efficiently) compute value of information? (3) how do we work out the value of a computer model? How much should we pay to make a simple model more complex? When do we stop increasing the complexity of a model?

Jeremy Oakley, Jim Chilcott and I have proposed an "internal" discrepancy-based method for managing model uncertainty. See this paper in JRSS Series C, and this paper in SIAM/ASA Journal of Uncertainty Quantification. The method is discussed in more detail in my PhD thesis.

We have proposed an efficient method for computing partial EVPI. This method works for any number of parameters of interest and requires only the PSA sample. See this open access paper in Medical Decision Making. R functions to implement the method can be downloaded here. This paper uses Gaussian process-based methods that are nicely described in the  Managing Uncertainty in Complex Models (MUCM) toolkit.

The partial EVPI method extends nicely to the computation of EVSI. See here for our open access paper on the efficient computation of EVSI.

Research interests

Steve researches in the areas of Labour Economics and the Economics of Education. Much of his research examines the labour market outcomes of education, considering for example the wage returns to particular qualifications, and the incidence and implications of mismatch between the demand for and the supply of skills. Steve´s current research projects involve a study of the wage returns to apprenticeships, an examination of the relationship between vocational qualification subjects and job tasks, the effects of the polarisation of the labour market on worker transitions, and an evaluation of a government training provision policy. Steve is interested in supervising any applied microeconometric PhD in the areas of labour or education.

Research interests

My research focuses on two areas: Economic forecasting and Monetary Economics. In the area of economic forecasting, I evaluate the forecast performance of forecasters using survey data. Alternatively, in the area of monetary economic, I analyze monetary policy preferences and the policy decision of central banks. I would be interested in supervising PhD students in these areas.

Research interests

Georgios' research interests lie in the areas of political economics, international industrial economics, and applied econometrics. In particular, his research focuses on:

• the role of political motivations in shaping economic policies and outcomes
• the linkages between external economic constraints, institutions, strategic incentives, and domestic policy decisions
• the drivers of innovation and productivity
• the relationship between financial constraints and firm/bank performance.

Georgios is actively involved in presenting his work to the academic and policymaking community through seminars, policy workshops, and world-leading international conferences.

Research interests

Juan's research interests are in the areas of macroeconomics and monetary economics, especially business cycles. His recent research focuses on:

• determinants of the sacrifice ratio in the OECD economies
• analysing the behaviour of central banks when setting interest rates
• exploring whether central banks are concerned about exchange rate stabilisation 

Enrico's research interests are focused on applied microeconometrics, particularly the interaction between international economics and economic geography, regional and urban economics, economic development, firms' innovation and productivity. Specifically, his research looks at firms’ behaviour, and the industrial and spatial analysis of globalization, applying econometric methods and GIS techniques to industrial and trade data at the micro-level, mainly using granular longitudinal data on firms’ characteristics, innovation and internationalization.

Research strands include:

• the effect of trade policies and trade shocks on the behaviour of firms, analysing the impact of trade defence instruments on affected firms and their externalities, or looking at the role played by policy uncertainty in changing the behaviour of internationalized firms
• analysing the uneven distribution of economic activities across space, for instance looking at the role of infrastructure and foreign direct investments in fostering economic diversification in developing countries, or also studying the regional and industrial disparities in terms of productivity, skills and innovation across developed economies.
• Enrico is also interested in environmental economics issues, in particular considering the adaptation of businesses to extreme natural event and climate change.

Enrico is interested in supervising PhD students in applied microeconometrics, specifically in topics related to trade and international economics, regional and urban economics, micro-level analysis of firms’ behaviour in terms of internationalization, productivity and innovation, development economics with specific focus on Sub-Saharan Africa or the Chinese economy, and environmental economics.

Panos’ research interests lie in the broad field of labour economics.

His work focuses on labour markets characterised by trading frictions. Using both applied theory and applied econometrics, often combined into structural modelling, Panos has examined a range of specific research questions, including the determinants of native-migrant wage differentials, the impact of the minimum wage on labour market outcomes, and the patterns of worker reallocation across firms and local labour markets.

Panos is interested in supervising PhD students in labour economics and applied econometrics.

Research interests

My main research interest concerns the application of geographical information systems and science (GIS) to public health research and practice. Research fields within this area include (i) geographical and environmental epidemiology; (ii) geographical variations in health and health care; and (iii) methodology for spatial studies.

Research interests

Anita's research interests are in applied microeconomics, with a focus on individual (household) decisions and well-being. Her current research focuses on the links between house prices, consumption and happiness as well as the effect of economic conditions on retirement decisions. She has previously carried out research into fertility decisions and on the role of pro-social behaviour in the delivery of public services. Her research uses individual or household level data, frequently matched with data on local area conditions. She is interested in supervising students in applied microeconomics.

Research interests

• My research interests are discrete event simulation, individual patient modelling and mathematical modelling in the field of health technology assessment and cost-effectiveness

Not currently taking new PhD students

Research interests

Health Psychology; predicting and changing health behaviour; habit and health behaviour; intention-behaviour relations; planning and implementation intentions; self-affirmation; binge drinking.

Research interests

Sarah's research interests lie in the area of applied microeconometrics focusing on labour economics, the economics of education and, more recently, household financial decision-making. Her research has focused on individual, household and firm-level data as well as matched workplace-employee data.

Examples of research projects include empirical analysis of the reservation wages of the unemployed (funded by the ESRC) and empirical analysis of wage growth, human capital and risk aversion (funded by the Leverhulme Trust). Her current research focuses on household financial decision-making and attitudes towards risk. Sarah is interested in supervising PhD students in applied microeconometrics.

Broad area of interest:

• Sociology of health and illness

Research methods I am able to supervise:

• Qualitative

Specific areas of interest:

• Reproductive technology
• Research ethics
• Gender and sexuality

Sustainable diets, the analysis of economic drivers of over and under nutrition, food and nutrition policy evaluation and the role of agriculture and food systems in enabling better nutrition and health. Much of this work is of an interdisciplinary nature, conducted in collaboration with nutritionists, health scientists, geographers and environmental scientists.

Lecturer in Finance (Assistant Professor)

Shengfeng welcomes PhD applications with an interest in corporate finance (or financial management) and its interdisciplinary areas. The candidate is expected to having basic training of applying econometrics and quantitative skills to analyse problems of firms. The discussion will be based on an initial research proposal.

Research Interests

• Health service access
• Participatory approaches
• Patient and Public involvement
• Health Literacy

I am a qualitative researcher and my research interests centre on working with vulnerable groups to explore ways in which they are enabled to actively participate in their health/health systems.

Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Finance

Junhong welcomes PhD applications in the areas of his research interests including Corporate finance (e.g. ESG, Innovation and M&As), Financial Technology, Social Finance (e.g. Social Media), the Economics of Transition in China, Financial Inclusion, Financial Economics, Political Finance and Behavioral Finance and PhD applicants with strong backgrounds in Data Science, Text Analytics, Statistical Computing and Machine Learning.

Steve has 25yrs research and evaluation experience in the field of men, gender and health with particular emphasis on health promotion/public health and men's mental wellbeing. More recently, he has been developing an additional portfolio of nursing research relating to safe and effective staffing, nursing education, nursing leadership and developing nursing roles (particularly Nursing Associates and Advanced Nursing Practice). He is primarily a qualitative researcher with expertise in Thematic Analysis, data integration and critical realism.

Research interests

My research interests relate to the evaluation of complex interventions and systems in emergency care settings. I have extensive experience in multi-centre mixed methods studies which can directly inform the delivery of high quality emergency care to patients.

Methods:

• Realist (and other ‘theory led’) Evaluations of Programmes and Complex Interventions 
• Conversion Analysis & Ethnomethodology
• Mixed and Qualitative Research Methods

Topics of Interest:

• Health Service Organisation and Delivery
• Interdisciplinary Team-Working
• Organisational change management
• Implementation and knowledge transfer
• Use of technology in healthcare (for service development and evaluation)
• Health Care Interactions and Relationships
• Self-Management of Chronic and Long-Term Conditions
• Older People's Community Health Services

Research interests

My principal research interest relates to the psychological and social factors which influence how people cope with chronic oral health conditions and their treatment. Such conditions include cleft lip and palate, oral cancer, orthognathic conditions, xerostomia, periodontal disease and edentulousness. This programme of work investigates the psychosocial factors which influence individual’s experiences of their oral health and the impact on well-being and quality of life. Understanding the role of such factors – sense of coherence, self esteem, social support networks, coping strategies, stress and resilience – allows us to explore potential mechanisms by which oral health impacts on individual’s daily lives and, in turn, develop intervention strategies that have the potential to improve health and well-being.

Other research interests include a critical examination of the conceptual foundations of oral health quality of life concepts, together with methodological and statistical approaches within the OHQoL field. Much of this research involves modelling the biopsychosocial determinants of oral health and well-being across the lifecourse using statistical techniques such as, structural equation modelling. 

Research interests 

• Bayesian statistics in clinical trials and health economics
• Network meta-analysis
• Extrapolate time-to-event data
• Eliciting probability distributions
• Value of information analysis

I am a General Practitioner and Senior Clinical Lecturer;  Deputy Academic Training Programme Director NIHR Sheffield Clinical Academic Training programme; Research training and Capacity Building Lead on the ‘PRIME’ NIHR RCUK Global Health Project 

I have research interests in the overlap of physical and mental health problems and health inequity in access to primary care of high risk, underserved populations. I have methodological expertise in health service qualitative and quantitative study design and analysis including the development and evaluation of complex interventions in primary care; recruiting for clinical studies in high risk deprived and/or socially excluded populations.

Current and recent projects:

EDIT: Early Diagnosis Intervention and Treatment of long-term conditions (respiratory disease, T2 Diabetes Mellitus, Cancer) in high-risk populations.  For example postnatal interventions for women with gestational diabetes, primary care interventions to improve respiratory health of high risk populations , for examples: people who use substances; people living with HIV;  people living with severe mental illness  

Co-investigator,  PhD and Clinical Academic Trainee supervisor on the ‘PRIME’ NIHR Global Health Research Group on PReterm bIrth prevention and manageMEnt (PRIME) https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/ptb-grant-reduce-child-death-1.794251. Our LMIC/ UK partnership includes partners in Bangladesh, South Africa and Nigeria. I work as a senior clinical academic within the evidence synthesis, clinical (intervention development, health service delivery)  and social science qualitative research teams  

Postgraduate supervision:

Clinical Academic Trainees; NIHR In practice training fellows; ACF and ACL; Masters; PhD students (multidisciplinary) 

Research Interests

Research interest focuses on inequalities in health and access to health services for both those with chronic disabling diseases and those who are socially excluded from care.

• Health inequalities 
• Health Services Research and Technology Assessment.
• Public and patient involvement in research

Daniel’s research interests include the area of subjective well-being with a particular focus on the role of the household’s financial position. In addition, he is currently interested in household financial portfolio allocation and the effects of education on financial decision making.

More generally he is interested in applied microeconometrics and, in future, he would like to further explore these areas in addition to developing new research interests.

Daniel is looking to supervise PhD students in the area of household finances and applied microeconometrics.

Quantitative macroeconomics, in particular applications of control theory within reduced-form (VAR) and structural (Dynamic General Equilibrium) models to study macroeconomic policy.

Specific research topics include: (i) Fiscal policy sustainability, (ii) optimal monetary policy, (iii) sovereign credit risk, (iv) unemployment and social insurance, (v) optimal macroeconomic policy in heteroskedastic models.

Vito is interested in supervising students in quantitative macroeconomics and its intersections with private and public finance, using either VAR, DSGE or OLG models.

Specific areas of research he would supervise include: (i) analysis of time-varying volatility models; (ii) monetary and fiscal policy; (iii) sovereign credit risk; (iv) unemployment insurance; (v) ageing and public finances sustainability.

Research Interests

I am  broadly interested in public health policy processes, partnership and wider determinants of health.

My more specific research interests focus on:

1. issues of power, participation and partnership in public health policy processes;

2. the role of civil society (community) organisations and community development approaches in the public health system and specifically in relation to addressing wider determinants of health and wellbeing; and

3. complex/systems approaches to policy evaluation.

My research spans the areas of ageing, gender and sexual/reproductive health, as well as the psychology of health and health care.

I have a strong focus on help-seeking for sexual issues, patient-practioner communication about sexual issues, and social attitudes around ageing, gender, and sex.

Methodologically, my expertise lies in qualitative research, vulnerable groups, and sensitive topics.

Professor of Health Management

Jeremy's research falls broadly into three areas, with plenty of crossover between them – management of health care organisations, team working, and statistics.

Recent projects in health care include:

• a study of the effects of NHS staff engagement and experience on patient outcomes
• a longitudinal evaluation of Schwartz Center Rounds in the NHS
• the development and implementation of a tool to measure effectiveness of general practices.

Current work includes a study on the Retention of Mental Health Staff (RoMHS), an evaluation of specialist clinics for people suffering from multiple, medically unexplained symptoms (MSS3), and the Behaviour in Teams (BiT) study examining the benefit on giving teams feedback on their behaviour in meetings.

Inclusive/age-friendly design; Ageing-in-place: accessible design; Design for health and wellbeing; Design of dementia-friendly environments; Design of enabling environments.

Research interests

My main interest is child-centred dental research to increase understanding of the impact of oral health and dental care on children and young people. My work involves inclusive research with children with the aim of informing policy and clinical practice.

I co-ordinate the Children and Young People Oral Health Research Group, a multidisciplinary team conducting research with children using a range of research methods

My research interests involve the use of decision-analytic modelling to help with policy decisions. In particular, this includes the use of health economic modelling for assessing the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of Public Health interventions. Key methodological interests include conceptual modelling and individual-level simulation.

Research interests

My earliest work was in the field of neuroscience, where I used the human
tooth pulp as a model to gain greater understanding into mechanisms of
inflammatory pain. However, I then moved from basic science research to
more social science research. I have focussed on the patient experience
with particular emphasis on the impact of dental conditions, such as
traumatic dental injuries or enamel defects on children's oral health-related
quality of life. I am also very involved in research to reduce children's
dental anxiety through a guided self-help cognitive behavioural therapy
approach. I work in a fantastic multi-disciplinary research team which aims
to improve the oral health and treatment experiences of children and
young people through a combination of clinical and social science research
strategies. Our ethos is to engage children themselves in all our research
and service development activities. To date, I have supervised 10 PhDs, 2
MPhils and 11 Masters to completion which have mostly had a
child-centred theme.

My current research programme is driven by Health and Social policy which have highlighted the need to be more inclusive of children in decisions about their healthcare, as well as involving them more actively in health-related research and service development. In line with this, a key research objective is to develop robust patient-centred clinical outcome measures for use in dentistry. These will have important application within the NHS in determining the benefits of various treatment modalities in order to more effectively direct resource allocation.

I work within a unique multi-disciplinary research group at the University of Sheffield, the ‘Person Centered and Population Oral Health’ group, which includes researchers across several clinical specialities and social sciences. The group conducts and implements high quality research in oral health, utilising the theories and empirical traditions of dental public health, sociology and psychology and a range of methodologies.

Broad area of research interest:

• Malnutrition: under-and overnutrition
• Food environment and policy
• Nutrition in emergencies management
• Evaluation of complex interventions
• School health and nutrition
• Maternal and child health
• Low middle income countries

Specific areas of interest:

• The socio-cultural, economic and political influences of malnutrition
• Community-based approaches to addressing childhood malnutrition
• Food security, food systems and policies: Understanding the physical, economic, political, and sociocultural surroundings that influence an individual’s food choice
• Understanding how the individual dietary practices, patterns and behaviours impact on non-communicable diseases
• Social interventions to improve maternal and child health in low income countries.
• Infant and young child feeding practices, including school feeding interventions

Research interests

Our research aims to improve outcomes for children with inherited and acquired bone diseases and understand better the factors contributing to fracture in apparently healthy children.

We are currently conducting two studies of oral Risedronate therapy in children with Osteogenesis Imperfect (OI) and are collaborating with colleagues in Montreal to study Zoledronie acid in infants with severe OI (PI Francis Glorieux). In addition we are waiting with colleagues to study osteoporosis in children with inflammatory joint disease (POP study, PI Madeleine Rooney, Belfast) and the effects of Vitamin D supplementation in pregnancy on skeletal outcomes in infancy (MAVIDOS study, PI Cryus Cooper). We are the European centre for an open label study of recombinant bone-targeted alkaline phosphotase in severe hypophosphotasia (PI Cheryle Greenburg; funded by Enobia Pharma). Children travel from other European countries to participate in the study.

Research interests

I am a social psychologist, interested in self-regulation and behaviour change. Specifically, I am interested in how people achieve their goals and make changes to their behaviour.

The usual answer is that people need to be motivated. However, even medium-to-large changes in people's intentions seem to have only a small-to-medium effect on their behavior. In short, motivation is not enough. As a result, much of my research to date has investigated how the effects of motivation can be boosted by forming specific plans - known as "implementation intentions" - that links good opportunities to act with suitable responses to those opportunities.

My research interests are in Bayesian statistics, in particular uncertainty quantification for complex computer models, eliciting probability distributions from experts, and applications in Health Economics. On my personal website you can read these guidance notes for more information about PhD projects and suggested background reading.

Research Interests

• Measuring and valuing health and quality of life
• Modelling preference data
• Methodology of developing preference-based measures of health from existing measures
• Mapping between measures to generate utility values
• Measuring and valuing child health

I have three main areas of interest:

Placebo/nocebo effects - How can we enhance placebo and reduce nocebo effects in the context of medicines in a way that is ethical (i.e without impacting informed consent)? And does this have implications for adherence?

Risk communication - Improving communication of risks in patient information leaflets, the doctor-patient consultation, and the role of empathy.

Health behaviour in the context of public health emergencies - Changes in behaviour as a result of public health scares and how to encourage protective health behaviours.

Research Interests

My research interests are in Health Services and Public Health research.  My main field of research is the evaluation of emergency and urgent first contact care and services, particularly A and E services, including trauma services and chest pain care; ambulance services including helicopter ambulances; and urgent first contact care services including telephone and out-of-hours services.  I also carry out methodological research related to the design of health service evaluations, and I have a particular interest in the use of routine (e-health) data for HSR.

Research Interests

• Pharmacy
• Non-medical prescribing
• Addiction
• Empirical and normative ethics in healthcare 
• Medicine supply (prescribed and over the counter) and misuse/abuse (over the counter, illicit)
• Medical sociology
• Public Health

Methods

• Qualitative (interviews, observation, ethnography, content analysis, narrative)
• Mixed methods (questionnaires, secondary data analysis)

Broad area of research interest: 

• Health inequalities
• Gender
• Race/ethnicity
• Poverty
• Reproductive health
• Work and health
• South Asia

Research methods I am able to supervise:

• Qualitative
• Quantitative or mixed methods
• Participatory and inclusive research approaches

Specific areas of interest:

• UK South Asian populations
• Intersecting inequalities
• Complex interventions
• Knowledge translation

Broad area of research interest:

• Mental health
• Online learning
• Technology (inernet, social media) 

Methods I am able to supervise:

• Qualitative
• Mixed Methods
• Systematic review 

Specific areas of interest:

My main research interest is in the role of emotions in online learning, and more generally the impact of the internet on well-being. I have been involved in developing and evaluating e-learning Psychotherapy training resources across Europe. Since my doctoral research, I have become interested in the potential of learning analytics and the use of data on well-being to enhance and personalize students' learning, and the application of the same principles in analysing therapeutic interactions. I am developing an interest in narrative therapy and use of virtual reality.

Emily’s research focuses on time series and financial econometrics. Some of her current areas of interest are:

• Explosive autoregressive processes with applications to the detection and dating of asset price bubbles
• Real time monitoring of economic and financial time series
• Structural breaks in volatility
• Forecast evaluation
• Nonlinear unit root testing

Emily is interested in supervising graduate research in the areas of time series and financial econometrics (both theoretical and applied).

I work at the intersection of medical sociology and science and technology studies. My doctoral research looked at lay and professional constructions of familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH), a treatable hereditary condition associated with heart disease. My analysis focussed on the themes of geneticisation, genetic responsibility and biosociality, three prominent concepts in discussions of the social implications of genetic knowledge. Subsequent research projects looked at more mundane health technologies for cholesterol management, including cholesterol-lowering foods containing plant sterols and prescription and over-the-counter statins. Current research is expanding this work on consumer health technologies, looking at self-monitoring technologies such as blood pressure monitors and weighing scales/BMI monitors. All of these studies consider professional expectations as well as people’s accounts of why and how they adopt and use, or don't use, particular products or technologies. They consider the way responsibilities for health are distributed, the practices involved and the implications for forms of expertise in relation to health care. The work critically engages with notions of 'self-care' and 'health behaviours', proposing alternative lenses such as care infrastructures and practice theory approaches. I have an ongoing interest in developments in the biomedical sciences. Recent work has looked at the routine practices of racialised prescribing.

 Research interests:

• everyday health practices
• mundane health technologies
• self-monitoring, self-tracking, self-care
• social implications of biomedical developments eg genomics, epigenetics
• social categories in the clinic
• qualitative research methods

Research interests

The main concern of Dr Manson´s research has been, throughout, the development of robust structural health monitoring strategies for the purposes of damage identification. Over the years, this has taken on various approaches beginning with the examination of the response of nonlinear mechanical systems before moving into the fields of signal processing, pattern recognition, machine learning and multivariate statistics for damage identification. More recently, with the questions of damage prognosis and robustness of structural health monitoring systems, the research has led toward the investigation of the propagation of uncertainty through systems and structures.

I am currently working on projects to ascertain the information needs and their classifications, of young informal carers in the UK in collaboration with Strathclyde and Leeds Beckett. Along with colleagues at Northumbria, De Montfort and Suffolk, I’ am investigating the microblogging dynamics of NHS workers during the Covid19 pandemic. I’ am also working with two of my former students, Rob Frear (Chesterfield Royal Hospital) and Salime Mascarenas (Prometheus Group) to ascertain diabetes ketoacidosis readmission risks from hospital records and information needs of stakeholders towards developing trust in machine learning based manufacturing processes in the aerospace industry respectively.

My recent research investigated the interpretation of GDPR principles by various UK Higher Education stakeholders, particularly focussing on the utilisation of student data and in collaboration with Santander Bank on a students’-led project, we investigated the factors responsible for digital banking adoption in young adults in the UK.

My previous research has contributed towards identifying information practices influencing the attainment of UN Sustainable Development Goals and cultural sustainability. I was a named researcher in a JISC funded project which led to the development of a recommendations-based reading list prototype learning and resource management for UK higher education libraries, which further sparked interest to develop a novel ranking method for research datasets, based on quality and popularity.

My research has been published in scholarly outlets i.e., Journal of the Association of Information Science & Technology (JASIST), Journal of Information Science, PlosOne, iConference and the Asia-Pacific Information Technology Conference (ACM organised).

Tony's research interests are focused in areas of critical psychology and psychoanalytic concepts and theory. To date his research has focused on contributing to the concept of a critical educational psychology. Related areas of interest include group dynamics, conceptions of mental health and emotional wellbeing, case study research and the use of reflexive and interpretative research methods.

I am a mixed method researcher and equally use qualitative as well as quantitative methods. I explore gender based violence, especially intimate partner violence from the perspective of victims and perpetrators.  I am interested in exploring nursing research related topics,  inequalities in health care experiences and health outcomes and how the preparation and training of health professionals such as doctors, nurses and allied health professionals can contribute to tackling such inequalities. Any other topics related to nursing, nursing research  

Professor of Employment Relations

Research interests

Pauline's research focuses on employment security, with two main sub-themes. The first is employment security and the role of the trade unions in emerging economies. This research programme has considered different dimensions of work and employment and includes the development and analysis of large scale surveys in South Africa, Brazil and Mozambique in addition to in-depth qualitative research. The second is job security for those with disabilities and health conditions. Pauline continues to explore disability and employment, the dynamics of sickness absence and return to work, and the policies and practices surrounding this. Pauline has published in journals including British Journal of Management, Human Resource Management Journal, Public Sector Management, Industrial Relations, International Journal of HRM, Journal of World Business, and Work Employment and Society.

PhD supervision:

Pauline would be interested in supervising students who wish to investigate disability and employment.

My research centres on social science and perspectives on health and illness, especially with respect to health inequalities and ageing. My work sits at the interface of sociology, social policy and public health.  I have particular interests in intersectionality, biomarker analysis, chronic disease/multimorbidity, social determinants of health, the life course, and extending working lives. I have methodological expertise in the analysis of survey data, including the use of multilevel models and panel data methods.  I am interested in supervising PhD students working on the above topics.

My research falls at the intersections of Science and Technology Studies, Sociologies of Race and Ethnicity, and Digital Sociology.

My current and previous research includes:

• exploration of institutional practices of stem cell banking which included looking at race classifications, legacies of health care inequity, and genetic understandings of racial differences in blood and tissue in a UK context
• digital health and self-monitoring technologies - user, commercial and policy perspectives through ethnography, interview, and novel material methodologies
• stem cell donor recruitment activities in minority communities including ethnography of minority community donor drives, and digital method-based analysis of online minority ethnicity recruitment campaigns that focus on mixed raced donors

Interested in supervising research students who are focused on the following topics (in UK and/or other national/regional/international contexts)

• health activism - particularly targeted at, or taking place within, racialised communities
• processes of racialisation (and, more generally, invocations of racial difference) within biomedical contexts
• mixed raced experience, particularly in the context of health, and of new genetic sciences
• the intersection of race/ethnicity and digital media in general

Research Interests

My research focuses on alcohol and public health.  I have particular interests in trends and patterns in alcohol consumption, alcohol policy analysis, and the relationship between alcohol use and other health-related behaviours.  Recent projects focus on alcohol pricing, trends in drinking occasions, cultures and practices, youth drinking trends, the development and evaluation of drinking guidelines, and the equity implications of alcohol policy. 

I would be interested in supervising doctoral research related to any of the topics above using quantitative or mixed methods.  

Research Interests

• Infectious disease modelling.
• Epidemiology
• Burden estimation
• TB, particularly in settings with high-HIV prevalence, and population-level TB interventions.
• TB in children.
• Individual-based modelling methodologies.
• Methods for model calibration and uncertainty analysis
• Cost-effectiveness modelling
• Global health

Research Interests

As well as having an interest and clinical background in substance misuse and mental health (which was the area or work for my PhD), I have experience in designing and delivering complex interventions, as well as the feasibility, design and recruitment to studies within primary care and pharmacy settings. 

Stefania's overarching research interest is in dynamics of civic engagement on digital platforms of communication. Her approach to online data is based on a variety of textual analysis techniques - with an increasing focus on text analytics - informed by social network and framing theories. Stefania specifically focuses on:

• Digital activism: Stefania's early research focused on how digital media ease upward and downward scale shifts (i.e., from local to transnational and vice versa) in framing grievances. Work in this camp investigated the Global Justice Movement and the World Social Forum. She is also particularly interested in social media use with relevance to public sphere processes in the context of protest events, issue publics, everyday talk. Her work in this field has specifically focused on interactional and deliberative processes in the Cuban blogosphere and on meaning construction on Twitter streams relevant to anti-austerity protests in Italy.

• Digital health. Stefania is interested in the role of digital media in health democratizing processes, especially in processes of self-care, patient advocacy, health public debate, and health activism. Her main interest is in if, how and to what extent digital media may enhance bottom-up, patient-centred health practices. Stefania's work in this area is currently looking at online affordances for rare disease patient organisations in advocacy and activist dynamics and rare disease discourse practices on Facebook and Twitter.

Stefania has supervised PhD projects looking at different aspects of digital media use, among which, digital literacy, digital activism and online political participation. She is particularly interested in supervising students investigating digital activism, social media and health and/or who wish to apply digital methods approaches.

Her research focuses on food insecurity, emergency food systems and the role of public policy. Her work has been at the forefront of the emerging evidence base on the growth of food charity in the UK and comparative research across Europe. 

Available to supervise history topics

Saurabh's interests lie in exploring a range of themes connected with the social history of colonial and post-colonial South Asia. More specifically, his focus areas till now have included the following: the history of science and medicine in the subcontinent, the nature of Islam in South Asia, the history of agrarian processes and structures, and the formation of colonial policies and ideologies. He is currently working on a project on indentured labour in British Guiana which investigates the lives and experiences of indentured labourers through the lens of medical/health issues. While the plantation economy has been studied by a number of historians, this project adopts a different perspective by focusing on the medical regime that labourers were subjected to.

Abigail joined the Sheffield Methods Institute as a Lecturer in Qualitative Methods in 2020. Previously she had worked at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. Abigail completed a PhD at the University of York in 2015. Her thesis investigated female cultures of body modification across the life course, focusing on how women learn practices and the social norms which surround them. Abigails research has focued on organisational change (particularly within health and social care) and the impliations for workforce and inequalities as well as policy implementation. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, her research interests focus on organisation studies, inequalities and medical sociology/health services research and their intersection.

Abigail would welcome students with an interest in medical sociology, workforce and organisations adbn gender studies .

Broad area of research interest:

• Primary and secondary prevention of nutrition-related diseases.
• Interventions to support healthy eating and lifestyle in underserved groups.
• Reviews
• Food analysis and nutrient composition
• Public health, including low/middle income countries
• Sustainable diets

Methods I am able to supervise:

• Quantitative
• Qualitative (interviews, focus group discussions and vox pops)
• Mixed Methods
• Systematic review
• Narrative review

Research interest:

• Nutrient composition of ethnic foods
• Development of food-based resources for health promotion and interventions
• Community-based interventions to support healthy eating and lifestyle.
• Interventions to enhance health literacy, expand health opportunities and reduce nutritional issues related to under/over nutrition.
• Promotion of sustainable diets.

My research is humanities based and critically explores architecture and urban space, using methodologies of critical-creative writing, ethnography, autotheory and feminism towards new cultural and social histories and theories. Key topics include combinations of architecture, health, domesticity, wellbeing, the body and the city. I use a variety of interdisciplinary sources including archives and English Literature. My current research, Lying in the Dark Room: Architectures of British Maternity, examines the role of architecture in the construction of the maternal body and maternity practices.

Potential PhD supervision areas: gender, domesticity and architecture/cities; health/wellbeing/medicine and architecture/cities; documentary, autotheory, ethnography and observational methods in drawing, writing and film; ideas of care and intersectional and decolonial feminism. I supervise both 'by design' and 'written' PhDs

My research is fundamentally interdisciplinary, and has applications both in academic, public service and in industry. The topics and methods I am interested in include, but are not limited to: Information Retrieval, Human Computer Interaction, Data Visualisation, Urban Analytics, Digital Health, Machine Learning, Spatial Data Science, Representation Learning.

A detailed and updated list can be found here.

Professor of Management

Research interests

An economist by background, Paul's research interfaces applied labour economics and employment relations, and focuses on the management and resolution of workplace conflict, including mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), and Employment Tribunals. More recently this has included funded work on the role of line managers and how an online training intervention might impact conflict confidence and competence. 

Other areas of research interest include the relationships between disability and work; occupational health and safety; vocational training; self-employment/entrepreneurship; and economic inactivity.

Paul would be willing to consider supervising PhDs in relation to any of his research interests or related areas. Students wishing to explore research that draws on a variety of disciplinary perspectives are very welcome, as are those wanting to undertake pedagogical research.

Dr. Anna Weighall is a Reader in Cognitive and Developmental Psychology at the School of Education, with a cross-disciplinary focus encompassing Education and Psychology. She specialises in the intricate relationships between sleep, memory, and learning, along with spoken language development and vocabulary acquisition across different age groups and linguistic backgrounds. She is also an expert in sleep research, including the role of sleep in mental health and wellbeing.

Dr Durosaiye researches ageing and the built environment. He holds a PhD (2016) in architectural design and an MSc in Sustainable Waste Management (2013) from the Grenfell-Baines Institute of Architecture at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK.

After graduating as a civil engineer in 1993, he went on to obtain an MBA in 1995 at the University of Pécs, Hungary.

Before joining the University of Sheffield, between 2013 and 2016, he worked as a lead researcher on the EU Lifelong Learning Programme OIKONET project, which focused on contemporary housing solutions, through the synergistic collaboration across research, pedagogy and community participation.

His research interest is in age-friendly environments, spanning the notion of ageing-in-place, inclusive workplace design, sustainable design of the built environment and post-occupancy evaluation.

• Health & Social Care at home and in institutions
• Care recipent's and care worker's perspectives and knowledge 
• Financialisation of social care, business models and managment
• Social innovation in home care provision - a Wellcome Trust funded project 2017-18.
• Diane's Department of Health and Comic Relief funded project examined organizational cultures in care homes for older people and positive experiences of care. This study was conducted with colleagues at the University of East Anglia, University of Stirling, University of Worcester and Cardiff University.
• Recently Diane was involved in a two and half year, Department of Health and Comic Relief funded participatory project with care home residents and family carers to examine the organisational dynamics of abuse and respectful care of older people in care homes.

Diane’s research examines organizational arrangements, cultures and change in health and social care systems with two sub themes – organizational failure and institutional abuse in care homes; and social innovation in home care provision.

Diane is interested in supervising qualitative research in health and social care systems and organization; job quality, care workforce and labour arrangments; care quality, abuse and mistreatment in organized care; voice, power and whistle-blowing in the workplace and other organizations; collaborative forms of organizing and partnership. 

Diane is particularly interested in action research, participatory appraoches and co-production, and the development of organizational ethnography using visual methods, poetics and film.

Research interests

My research interests include:
• Systematic reviews of clinical effectiveness for healthcare interventions
• Development of methods for systematic reviewing and evidence synthesis including meta-analysis, meta-regression, individual patient data analysis and mixed-treatment comparisons/network meta-analysis
• Critical appraisal and risk of bias assessment methods for systematic reviews
• Exercise interventions for health outcomes

Senior University Teacher in Managerial and Corporate Economics

Lina Kloviene is a Senior University Teacher in Managerial and Corporate Economics at Sheffield University Management School Executive and Professional Education.

Lina is interested in supervising PhD students who would like to examine issues relating to with accountability and transparency in higher education institutions.

Sihan Li is a Lecturer in Climate Science in the Department of Geography at Sheffield University. Sihan obtained her PhD in Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences from Oregon State University in 2017, on large ensembles of regional climate modelling over the Western United States. Her PhD work was focused on modelling the regional response to anthropogenic warming in complex terrain, the changing characteristics of hydrometeorological extreme events, and uncertainty quantification/reduction in climate modelling. She then moved to University of Oxford as a research associate to work on droughts and fires in the Amazonia in response to climate change. Sihan stayed in Oxford as senior research associate to work on hydrological modelling of monsoon rainfall triggered landslides in mountainous Nepal, as part of a large international interdisciplinary project Sajag-Nepal– a partnership to improve preparedness for the mountain hazard chain in Nepal.

Current Projects:

Deplete and Retreat: The Future of Andean Water Towers

Sajag-Nepal, a partnership to improve preparedness for the mountain hazard chain in Nepal (https://www.sajag-nepal.org/)

Attribution and Synopsis of Landslide Impacts from Precipitation (ASLIP) in Southeast Brazil

World Weather Attribution, an initiative to conduct real-time attribution analysis of extreme weather events as they happen around the world (https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/)

Previous Projects: 

Climate and Health Pump-Priming Fund: Dengue forecasting workshop

Attributing Amazon Forest fires from Land-use Alteration and Meteorological Extremes (AFLAME)

Evaluating Extreme Rainfall in Eastern China (EERCH)

The Nature Conservancy/Oxford Martin School Climate Partnership

Forest Mortality, Economics, and Climate (FMEC)

Research Interests

• Law and development
• Corporate governance
• Company law
• Financial regulation
• New Institutional Economics

Areas of Research Supervision 

• Law and development
• Corporate governance
• Financial regulation

Member of Sheffield Institute of Corporate and Commercial Law.

Dean

Professor Finn’s research takes an organisation studies perspective, with a particular focus on policies and processes or organising in the health and social care context.

She has published extensively in the field of health care organisation, worked closely with external partners (including NHS and third sector), receiving grant funding from a range of funders (e.g. NIHR, ESRC, NHS and The Health Foundation) and taking an interdisciplinary approach (e.g. collaborating with colleagues from ScHARR, School of Nursing and Medical School). Current and recent research has included:

• Evaluation of the Flow Coaching Academy Quality Improvement programme (The Health Foundation)
• Retention of Mental Health Staff in the NHS (The Health Foundation)
• System Leadership role of Health and Wellbeing Boards in improving population health (National Institute for Health Research)
• The Role of Lived Experience in the Training and Education of Mental Health Professionals (Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust)

My main interests centre on the impact of mental health and physical co-morbidities and the analysis of routinely collected datasets in health services research.

I joined Sheffield University as a Lecturer in 2021. Previously I was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow based at Glasgow University where I taught modules in Land Law and Legal Theory.

My research is on property and private law aspects of platform and digital economies, including issues relating to regulation and consumer rights. Currently I am working on the topic of risk in property and sharing economies.

Research interests

• Commercial Law
• Digital Economy
• Contract Law
• Property Law and Theory
• Law and Economics

My research focuses on alcohol epidemiology, public health policy evaluation, and reducing health inequalities. I am interested in how complex social systems produce and interact with population health and inequalities, and in using this knowledge to inform intervention development, evaluation and refinement.

My recent projects have focused on changes in the clustering of health and wellbeing indicators among adolescents in high-income countries since the early 2000s, and the evaluation of major alcohol policies including minimum unit pricing in Scotland.

My academic interests concern administrative law and market regulation. In my research, I focus on government buying and selling. I have published on various aspects of UK and international public procurement regulation, and I am currently researching the legal side of major government auctions. My research uses empirical methods, qualitative and quantitative, and, related to this, I have a growing interest in the research field of empirical industrial organisation.

Research interests

• Administrative law
• Regulation
• Public Procurement Regulation
• Government contracts
• Competition regulation
• Law and economics
• Empirical legal research
• Socio-legal studies

• Music and emotion
• Embodied cognition and cross-modal correspondences with music
• Music for health and wellbeing 
• Expressive performance of music and ensemble communication 

Research Interests

Kanchana’s research focuses on time-series Econometrics with applications in economics and finance, semi-parametric and non-parametric statistics, and partial identification and related matters in average treatment effects.

Her research interests are directed towards developing new techniques of estimation and inference in linear stationary and non-stationary fractionally integrated models. She investigates the impact of mis-specification in these time series models.

Further, her research focuses on developing a new theoretical and methodological framework for estimating the fractional differencing parameter. She is also working on estimation and inference on partial identification-related matters in conjunction with average treatment effects.

Kanchana is interested in supervising PhD students willing to work in time series Econometrics inline with her research interests.

I have been teaching and researching issues relating to health law and ethics, and family law (particularly relating to children) for over 20 years and I am passionate about these subjects. I have also taught Criminal Law, English Legal Systems/Legal Methods, and Gender and the Law.

Research interests

Health care law and ethics generally - specifically:

• Consent and Capacity
• Decision Making for the 'Vulnerable'
• Risk and Regulation
• Clinical Research Involving Human and Non-human Animals
• Developing and Emerging Biotechnologies (such as xenotransplantation)
• Reproduction and Reproductive Technologies
• Organ Donation and Transplantation
• Conscientious Objection

Family law:

• Parents, Parenthood and Reproductive Technologies
• Children and Health
• Children and Childhood

I am interested in the many uses of the arts and popular culture, and the relationship between mental health, urban living, and politics. I think that people with mental health problems often find ways to live well and that one of the most positive developments in this field is the strength of the service user and voices movement. Collaborative approaches to mental health seem to me to offer a way forward. I have recently become a trustee of Art Refuge UK which uses art therapy in different international locations to support people (particularly young people and children facing the difficulties of migration).

Is not taking new PhD students

Research interests

Psychological treatments for depression: psychotherapy processes and outcomes; attachment theory; interpersonal processes. Psychological health in employment.

Research Interests

• Qualitative methodologies

• Complementary and alternative therapies

• Healthcare workforce and service delivery

• Mental health

Current projects

• DEUCE (Drivers of Demand for Emergency and Urgent CarE services)

I conduct qualitative research to understand the experience of living with long term conditions such as MND, dementia and cancer. I am particularly interested in the design and evaluation of complex interventions within social care.

Offering PhD opportunities in the following areas:

• Improving social care for people with long term health conditions
• Designing and evaluating complex interventions for social care
• Assessment and diagnosis experiences for people with MND
• Emotional labour of conducting research with people with long term health conditions

Research interests

I am Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the University of Sheffield and Consultant in Obstetrics and Maternal and Fetal Medicine at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. I am Training Programme Supervisor for the Maternal and Fetal Medicine subspecialty in Sheffield. I run clinical services addressing high risk pregnancies, prenatal diagnosis and therapy and prematurity prevention.

I am Principal Investigator on several Project Grants funded by the UK’s Department of Health, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the Medical Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), developing technologies for preterm birth risk assessment and interventions to mitigate preterm birth and other pregnancy complications.

I am Director of the NIHR Global Health Research Group on Preterm Birth Prevention and Management (PRIME) - an interdisciplinary research alliance working across UK, Africa (currently South Africa - Cape Town, Pretoria, Johannesburg; Nigeria – Kano, Benin and Ilishan), and South East Asia (currently Bangladesh and Karnataka India).

My translational research projects have attracted over £8million of grant income in the last 8 years and mainly focus on the physiology of human birth, reproductive immunology and reducing health inequalities.

I have supervised 18 PhD/MD students, and 10 Postdocs in the last 10 years amongst other. Areas in which I am able to supervise PhD/MD studentships and include:

·      Molecular biology of human parturition
·      Reproductive immunology of high-risk pregnancies and recurrent pregnancy loss
·      Global maternal and Newborn health
·      Health inequalities in maternal newborn health
·      Premature birth, still birth, pre-eclampsia, placental disorders.
·      Clinical and laboratory Maternal and Fetal Medicine

Research interests

• Developing the library workforce (including LIS education; professional skills and competencies of library workers)

• Academic libraries

• Role, impact and value of public library services

• Health and NHS Library Services / Clinical Librarianship

• Critical librarianship practice

• Library classification systems (application / development / issues and challenges of bias)

Research Interests:

• Access to and provision of equitable services for individuals from marginalised groups
• Learning disabilities
• Health behaviour particularly weight management
• Qualitative methods
• Narrative research
• Cross lanaguage qualitative research
• Realist synthesis
• Complex intervention development and evaluation
• Social Care Research

Specific area of research interests:

• Statistical methods
• Clinical trials methodology to improve trial efficiency across disease areas
• Adaptive designs
• Bayesian methods with application in clinical trials
• Early phase clinical trials
• Diagnostic accuracy studies
• Hierarchical or multilevel modelling
• Global health research
• Prediction modelling

Oral clinical phenotyping, involving the accurate measurement of oral parameters using image analysis.

Normal and abnormal oral growth and development, including investigations into anomalies of tooth number, size, form and structure.

Quantification of dental plaque and periodontal disease.

Child protection, children and young people's oral health, oral neuroscience.

My interests focus on student engagement within the education process and in different educational contexts and environments so that students are able to achieve their potential.  I also have an interest in social accountability and what it means to be socially accountable in health professions education. 

Broad Research Interests:

My research interests are health-related quality of life and patient outcome measures. In 2006 I was awarded a fellowship (Researcher Development Award) through the National Co-ordinating Centre for Research Capacity Development, NCCRCD). My PhD involved designing a paediatric disease-specific health related quality of life measure for amblyopia. The Child Amblyopia Treatment Questionnaire (CAT-QoL) is a short questionnaire that was designed for children aged 4-7 years to measure the impact of amblyopia treatment from the child’s perspective.

Research Methods I can Supervise:

• Instrument Development
• Mixed Methods
• Specific Areas of Interest:
• Paediatric
• Quality of Life

I am a registered nurse in adult and mental health fields of practice and an established researcher with specialist interest in the field of domestic abuse – recent work has focused on mental health and complex presentations of sexual harm and domestic abuse in older age - intimate partner and gender based violence and sexual harm.

As a registered nurse I am also interested in research studies which focus on nursing practice/development and/or organisational change.  

My research largely utilises a qualitative approach to enquiry including ethnography, arts based and narrative co-production.  I am a qualified trainer for the Joanna Briggs Institute of Systematic Reviews.

Overview

I am an interdisciplinary researcher with a background in psychology and human nutrition. I have considerable experience in supervising quantitative and qualitative research projects (lab based and free-living).

Research interests

My primary research interests are centred around (equitable) food systems, eating/ feeding behaviour(s), food consumption, and health. I have a specific interest (but not limited to) in the following topics:

• Promotion of healthy diets across the lifespan – specifically in young children and older adults
• Food insecurity
• Infant and child feeding behaviours
• Triple burden of malnutrition (over- and under-nutrition, micronutrient deficiencies)
• Impact of environmental influences on the habitual diet

Examples of recent PhD projects

• Biofortification and UK consumer acceptance
• Prevalence and associated predictors and determinants of disordered eating behaviours (DEB) among female adolescents in Saudi Arabia
• Downsizing: Using environmental cues to acquire healthy portion control in children
• Risk Factors for, and determinants of Obesity/Overweight in the Home Environment of 2-5-year-old Ghanaian preschoolers
• The contribution of urban horticulture to food security resilience, health and wellbeing
• Co-benefits of urban horticulture to physical, mental and environmental health, and motivations and barriers to gardening engagement

Research interests

I study practical effectiveness and responsible design of artificial intelligence technologies for medicine and health. This includes:

• The intersection of data science and disability, including critical disability perspectives on data and technology.

• Data science design processes, including responsible and ethical design as well as understanding translational challenges of data science in practice. 

• Practical natural language processing for health, including design of new NLP technologies and real-world evaluation.

• Text analysis for insight into data, including assessment of data bias and interactive exploration of text datasets.

I am also interested in LGBTQ+/queer perspectives on data science processes, and on developing technology-enhanced pedagogical methods for teaching data science.

Research supervision

I am interested in supervising PhD research projects in areas such as:

• Critical evaluation of data science/AI technologies and development practices

• Design and implementation of disability-focused informatics technologies

• Real-world evaluation of health NLP technologies

• Intersections of NLP/text mining techniques and social inequalities in text data

• Data science pedagogy, including group-based and technology-enhanced learning

Available to supervise archaeology topics

Lizzy is a specialist in human osteology and palaeopathology with particular interests in multidisciplinary approaches to questions surrounding past population structures, health, disease and lifestyle. She has worked with human remains from many periods and locations, but has primarily focussed on material from post-Roman to modern periods in the UK. Her current main areas of research include:

• Multidisciplinary analysis of osteological and funerary data from early medieval to post-medieval contexts
• The character and provision of Christian funerary practices in England
• Health status and social status in past populations
• The archaeology of childhood, especially perinates and infants
• Archaeology (and history) of the body, including  practices for managing, manipulating and curating human remains

Research Interests

My main interests are in text mining, both from semi-structured sources (such as publications) and unstructured sources (web, social media) and the application of natural language processing techniques for the purpose of knowledge extraction. I am particularly interested in applications in health, employment and education.

PhD supervision

I am interested in supervising PhD projects that exploit natural language, including:

• Combinations of text and speech within language models.

• Extraction of information from social media for the creation of (potentially structured) knowledge bases.

• Automatic organizing (hierarchical structuring) of information.

• Identifying and quantifying new information in text.

• Applications in the health domain, including literature based discovery or automatic diagnosis (assistance) based on natural text.

• Analyzing natural language (including native language identification) for applications in education.

Before moving to Sheffield, Andy was a lecturer at the University of Bristol, where he also completed his undergraduate degree (in Geography) and PhD (in Advanced Quantitative Methods). Methodologically, Andy’s interests are in the development and application of multilevel models, with work focusing on age-period-cohort analysis, fixed and random effects models, and multilevel models for uncovering intersectionality. He uses these methods in a broad range of substantive areas, such as mental health across the life course, the effect of unpaid care on employment outcomes, changing attitudes to migration, etc.

Research interests

Developmental speech, language and communication needs:

• Developmental trajectories and long term outcomes of children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN)
• Impact of social disadvantage on children’s speech, language and communication development
• Complex co-morbidity between speech and language development, social disadvantage, behavior and mental health in children and adolescents
• Evaluating the effectiveness of speech and language therapy interventions for children and adolescents

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma is the 6th most common cancers worldwide. The survival rate for head and neck cancer is poor. This is largely due to late diagnosis and a lack of effective therapeutic agents.

My particular research interest is in the development of multi-cellular three dimensional in vitro models of the oral mucosa in health and disease. My current research utilises these models to develop; new methods of detecting oral pre-cancer, novel drugs to treat oral cancer and new modes of drug delivery systems.

My interdisciplinary research aims to address the challenge of improving the sustainability and resilience of ecosystems, with a focus on urban and agricultural systems.  I have a particular interest in the interaction between soils, plants and the ecosystem services they provide to a growing global population.  

Urban horticulture

My research addresses the current and future potential of urban horticulture to make a contribution to local and national food security. This includes growing at a household level in gardens and allotments and using controlled environment agricultural systems in grey infrastructure.  I am also interested in the ecosystem service co-benefits of growing food, from soil quality to health and wellbeing.  As part of this research I run a national-scale citizen science project called Measure Your Harvest (MYHarvest.org.uk), that works people to collect long-term home grown crop yield data. My research also addresses the bioavailability of urban soil pollutants to fruit and vegetable crops and potential risks to human health. I work closely with local authorities and NGOs to deliver this applied research.

Soil and vegetation carbon budgeting

I have developed methods for soil carbon budgeting in complex urban ecosystems in both greenspaces and beneath greyspaces.  I am really interested in the role of black carbon in soil carbon storage and sequestration. 

Understanding the urban forest

Trees have been demonstrated to contribute disproportionately to ecosystem service provision in cities and towns but we have less understanding of how the unique combination of pressures in the urban environment, e.g. pollution and encasement in greyspace, affect their health and resilience to future climate change.  My research addresses both the role of urban trees in provision of ecosystem services e.g. heat island mitigation and carbon storage, and the effects of urban pressures on tree health and resilience at a species specific scale and the consequences for ecosystem service provision.

Available to supervise history topics

Julie's research interests lie in modern British political history, the history of extremism (with a focus on right-wing extremism in Britain), the construction of gender identities in the political sphere, and the history of mental health in times of crisis. She has published widely on women, gender and politics between the wars, including the role of women in Britain's fascist movement, women and the peace movement, and gender and appeasement.

Research interests

My general research interests are in the area of health services research essential to deliver a better performing healthcare system. More specifically, I am interested in using time series analysis of electronically captured behaviour data to understand habit and to support behaviour change among people with CF and healthcare professionals.

Research Interests

My research interest is in evaluation of healthcare interventions through modelling the long-term clinical outcomes and cost-effectiveness.

Specific areas of interest:

• Evaluations of public health programmes
• Screening and early detection
• Natural history disease modelling
• Cancer modelling
• Calibration of the models
• Transferability of models and cost-effectiveness studies
• Global research

The interplay of the body and the mind in development interventions, the role of identity and agency within gender, class and race oppression and their intersections with a particular focus on mental health. Critical theory, critical pedagogy and the capabilities approach.  Current research

Recovery and reintegration of survivors of modern slavery (Philippines)

Psychosocial wellbeing, ICTs and post-conflict societies (Myanmar)

Mobile Information Literacy (MIL) training for librarians

Mobile application for women’s empowerment

Conscientisation and human development

Research Interests

Deafness is a major public health issue worldwide, with more than 3 million people in the UK alone enduring a moderate to profound hearing loss. The Rivolta laboratory is dedicated to study the biology and behaviour of auditory stem cells (primarily human) and to explore their potential to regenerate the damaged inner ear.

Read more on research in the Rivolta laboratory

Lauren joined the Sheffield Methods Institute in January 2023 as a Lecturer in Social Research Methods, having previously worked as a researcher in iHuman and the School of Education at the University of Sheffield.

Lauren is a sociologist interested in health, disability, everyday life, materialities and mobilities. Her research is often interdisciplinary in nature and spans sociology, geography, urban studies, and critical disability studies. She is particularly interested in creative and participatory qualitative research methods and doing meaningful public engagement.

Reserach interests

My research interests cover use of data science and machine learning models to address problems in bio-informatics, computational biology and health-informatics fields. I would be happy to supervise PhD students who are interested in bioinformatics and health informatics. For example, developing/employing data science and machine learning models to understand the key mechanisms underlying diseases by integrating multi-omics data resources; to assess/monitor the change in wellbeing of the participants of a particular intervention study; employing explainable AI to predict the subtypes of different cancer types from the pathological images; predicting the associations between circular RNA, microRNA, and target genes which drive a particular type of cancer.

PhD Supervision

Example topics:

-Prediction of biomarkers (e.g. circRNA, microRNA or mRNA) of a given cancer type.

-Integrating multi-omics data resources for biomarker prediction in common human diseases such as cardiometabolic disorders.

-Using explainable AI to analyse histopathological images to predict subtypes within a cancer cohort and extending this approach to other cancer types.

My research passion is to bring cutting edge technologies to application reality in complex environments through co-creation with Industry partners.  Concrete examples include current partnerships with Rolls-Royce and Airbus which are seeing novel application of:

• Sensors: self powered wireless sensors running on engine testbeds, and RADAR/LiDAR systems for health monitoring and vision-based control;
• Data analytics: real-time to estimates of unmeasurable engine states, bring physics into data driven deep models for advanced anomaly detection;
• Control architectures: using systems based engineering to develop cyber-secure distributed control systems with multiple levels of safety criticality, fusing machine learning with control methodologies for increasing system resilience to faults and degradation.

PhD topics in diverse areas are available including vision-based health monitoring systems for aircraft landing gear, generative AI for jet engine fleet forecasting, novel state estimation approaches using 'black-box' simulation models.

Research interests

The Sheffield Institute of Translational Neuroscience, established as part of a major strategic initiative within the University of Sheffield is well-placed to harness the revolutionary developments in biomedical science for the benefit of patients with neurodegenerative disease. The major goal of my group is to elucidate the functioning of motor neurones in health and disease and to translate these basic science findings into health benefits for patients afflicted with degenerative motor system disorders.

My research group consists of a multidisciplinary team of basic and clinical scientists investigating molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration in disorders of the human motor system, particularly motor neurone disease (MND), spinal muscular atrophy and hereditary spastic paraparesis (HSP). The Neurology group is closely linked with Neuropathology, headed by Professor Paul Ince. The research resources underpinning this programme include clinical material (Biobanks of DNA, blood RNA, CSF, fibroblasts and CNS tissue donated by patients for research); and in vitro and in vivo experimental models employed to investigate molecular mechanisms of motor neurone injury including genetic perturbations, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and disorders of RNA processing.

I completed my undergraduate degree in Law with Politics at Keele University in 2007. I then worked as a lawyer and as a teacher (in further education) before returning to Keele University to undertake an LLM in Law and Society in 2013. In 2014 I was awarded funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership (NWCDTP) to undertake a PhD at Keele University. My PhD research consisted of an ideology critique of market reforms to the English National Health Service (NHS). I joined the School of Law at the University of Sheffield in January 2018.

Research interests

My research group is interested in how our bones function in health and disease with an emphasis on cancer. We are interested in knowing why primary bone cancers occur and how to best treat them. We are also interested in trying to understand why and how primary cancers such as breast and prostate spread preferentially to bone. Other interests include investigating mechanisms leading to osteoarthritis and failure of orthopedic implants. We use cutting edge scientific techniques and technologies, both in vitro and in vivo,  to answer clinically relevant questions.   

• Aesthetics, colour and human reactions to urban green infrastructure (UGI)
• Futureproofing places for climate resilience, biodiversity and human health and wellbeing
• Co-creating nature-based solutions (NBS) in deprived diverse places
• Connecting children with nature through co-creating NBS
• Green social prescribing: Opportunities, challenges, and environmental co-benefits

I use integrative inter-disciplinary approaches drawn from environmental psychology, urban ecology, sociology and cultural geography. As a landscape architect I believe strongly in the importance of design for diverse urban publics rather than for professional elites, and aim to reconcile human aesthetic preferences, well-being and ecological objectives.

Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Creative Industries

Dr Morgner's research lies within fields like complexity studies, network analysis and creative practices, with a particular focus on diversity and inclusivity. He has a particular interest in grand conceptual questions and methodological innovation in studying global cultural processes and innovation.

Dr Morgner would welcome enquiries from prospective postgraduate students, particularly in the following areas: Cultural and Creative Industries Social Theory (in particular on Niklas Luhmann’s system theory). Race and Inequality Interaction and Health Disaster and Risk Communication Urban development

My research interests and activities focus on two main themes, which are integrated into approaches to research-led-teaching: the theory and philosophy of urban landscape design and their impact on the intellectual underpinning and conceptual development of design processes and spatial languages; socially sustainable approaches to planning and design in urban open spaces, particularly how spatial and experiential dimensions converge to influence psychological health and well-being.

These general areas of interest converge in Experiential Landscape and Socially Restorative Urbanism, a research stream concerned with applying an integrated approach to human-environment relations to place making in urban open space settings. Along with Dr James Simpson, I lead the Socio-Spatial Urbanism Unit.

 Research interests

I welcome research students who are interested in applied linguistics in its broadest sense. Qualitative and multiple/mixed methods approaches (incl. participatory and inclusive designs), interdisciplinary research as well as collaborations with institutions and organizations outside the University are all welcome. Interesting topics include but are not restricted to the following

• Individual multilingualism (from a socio-cultural perspective)
• Intercultural communication
• Interpersonal communication
• English as a Lingua Franca
• Translation and localization
• Multimodal communication (including audiovisual translation)
• Intercultural/contrastive pragmatics
• Register analysis (comparative/diachronic)
• Communication in organizations and institutions (including web-based communication)
• Business communication
• Interaction with technology (including user studies)
• Technology and science communication
• Risk, health and safety communication
• Medical communication
• Second language use
• Second language identities

Research interests

Research in the laboratory focuses on the mechanisms of nerve cell death in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS; also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig disease), hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). We are especially interested in the involvement of axonal transport, mitochondria and ER.

Current research themes include:

• The mechanisms causing defective axonal transport of mitochondria in ALS, PD and HSP.
• The cellular roles of C9ORF72 protein and their role in ALS and FTD
• The biology of close contacts between the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and mitochondria and their involvement in health and disease

Work in the lab is funded by grants from the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Thierry Latran Foundation, the Motor Neurone Disease Association (MNDA), the Spastic Paraplegia Foundation, and the Moody Endowment Fund.

I am an academic GP.  My special interests are neurology, epilepsy and psychogenic non-epileptic seizures.  Major themes in my research are improving emergency care for people after a seizure and the use of free-association narrative interviews to give new insights into psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. All of my research is about health-service quality improvement, my personal methodological expertise is in quantitative methods but I work in multi-disciplinary research teams using mixed methods to develop and test complex interventions. 

I am very happy to receive informal enquiries.  Feel free to get in touch by email.  

My web profile is avaiable via this link:

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/medicine/research/aupmc/staff/academicprofiles/jmdickson

Research Interests

My main research interests lie in applied micro-econometrics and health. I am interested in applying advanced quantitative techniques to large datasets to explore obesity.  I am particularly interested in obesity across different stages of life and how and why obesity prevalence changes over time, by age and across different generations.  My previous research has included a range of quantitative methods including factor analysis, structural equation modelling, growth models and mixture models as well as methods for dealing with missing data.  I am also interested in methods development in related research areas.

Current and recent research includes the estimation of:

• BMI trajectories in older adults (including novel methods to account for missing data)
• obesity and overweight trends in England
• trends in weight-to-height ratio and associated risk in England
• obesity trends in Ghanaian women
• the impact of weight change on EQ-5D-3L

Research interests

My group is interested in identifying novel regulators of inflammatory signal transduction, characterising their basic mechanism of action, as well as validating some of these novel genes as potential drug targets for therapeutic intervention in chronic inflammatory diseases.

Much of our recent work has been focussing on studying the biological importance of the tribbles (TRIB) family of pseudokinases in cell types that are relevant to the development of cardiovascular disease.

In addition, we have also been collaborating closely with several research groups, from the US and Europe to characterise the role tribbles proteins play in the development and progression of cancer.

Most recently, we begun to develop approaches that enable us to selectively target TRIBs with the aim to use these as a platform for future drug development.

To support our research goals, we have established a global network of collaborators to pursue joint projects that aim to understand the importance of tribbles in cell biology, both in health and disease.

Research Interests

My research interests are at the intersection of critical studies of technology and society, social change, and information ethics. I focus on social appropriation and embodied experiences of technologies by different social groups, digital poverty, information privacy in the context of people’s migration and displacement, critical studies of information and communication technologies within sustainable development, and the role of public access to information in mis/disinformation. My research is qualitative and I use participatory and visual methodologies of research.

Research supervision

I am particularly interested in hearing from research students focusing on the following areas:

The design and evaluation of health communications (text, images, different technologies and so on) and interventions

How different people (i.e. children, professionals and so on) search for, and use, information, as well as the influence of the environment and the context of use

The design of inclusive research methods / methodologies

Dr Maria Tzanou’s research focuses on European constitutional and human rights law, privacy, data protection, surveillance, the regulation of new and emerging technologies and the inequalities of data privacy law and how these affect vulnerable groups. She is the author of The Fundamental Right to Data Protection. Normative Value in the Context of Counter-Terrorism Surveillance (Hart, 2017) and the editor of Personal Data Protection and Legal Developments in the European Union (IGI Global, 2020) and Health Data Privacy under the GDPR. Big Data Challenges and Regulatory Responses (Routledge, 2021). 

Research Interests

• Data Protection Law
• Privacy Law
• European Human Rights Law
• AI and Emerging Technologies Regulation
• Surveillance

Maria is happy to supervise PhD research in the following areas: privacy and data protection, big data, AI and human rights, surveillance, regulation of emerging technologies.

As a clinician scientist, I engage in both clinical and laboratory research, which is internationally recognised, with publications in Lancet, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Nature Clinical Oncology, Clinical Cancer Research, Annals of Oncology Breast Cancer Research and Treatment and other journals. I lead the Clinical Bone Oncology and Biomarkers Group in University of Sheffield (LINK), which has a particular focus on the impact of cancer on the skeleton in patients with breast, prostate and renal cancer. Our recent research includes the use of biomarkers in established bone metastasis to aid patient management and studies of the negative impact of cancer treatments on bone health. One of the main objectives of our current clinical and laboratory work is to develop novel prognostic and predictive biomarkers for clinical use in patients with early cancer to help in prevention or delay of cancer metastasis to bone, after which disease is incurable.

I also run clinical studies to develop innovative therapeutic approaches in breast, renal and prostate cancer. As Chief Investigator, I currently lead a large UK-wide, 40 centre, clinical trial (STAR) funded by NIHR, to determine whether treatment breaks in patients with renal cancer receiving targeted therapies, can reduce toxicity and have health economic benefits, without loss in efficacy. I am also PI on a clinical study funded by Cancer Research UK aimed at evaluating a potentially exciting new form of virotherapy in patients with prostate cancer.

Journalism, Media and Communication

Bina’s research interests include media representation, the relationship between the media and democracy, critical incidents in journalism, race equality in journalism, media policy, and media self-coverage. Bina’s research and publications have contributed to knowledge relating to key debates about press regulation, the public interest, public trust, media ownership, political economy of the media, paradigm repair, boundary work, and the public sphere concept. Her research into how the British press covered the press standards debate that followed The News of the World phone hacking scandal and the Leveson Inquiry employed content and critical discourse analyses and was interdisciplinary in content drawing from law, politics and psychology in addition to journalism. 

Bina’s research entitled, A meta-analysis of key concerns and developments on media standards informed the 2020-2022 Impress Code Review. The research findings were used by the press regulator, Impress to modernise the Standards Code and make it fit for purpose in the digital age. Her research on the WhatsApp, Black People and COVID-19 Infodemic explored the WhatsApp Communications of Nigerians in the UK and Nigeria, using the methods of interviews and content analysis. This work made contributions to knowledge about effective health communications in times of Public Health Emergencies. Bina’s current research investigates race-based student activism in journalism, media, and communication schools in the UK using the methods of content analysis, interviews, and surveys. 

PhD Supervision 

• Bina is interested in supervising students in the following areas:
• The relationship between the media and democracy
• Race equality involving Black Asian and Minority Ethnic groups
• Media representation on diverse platforms
• Media self-coverage 
• Political economy of the media

Research interests

I have two main areas of research interest. The first is the ethical, legal and social issues associated with emerging medical technologies and the second focuses on the commercialisation of biotechnology and expectation dynamics in medical innovation. My research has previously examined the development of gene therapy, genomics, pharmacogenetics, stem cells and regenerative medicine. I have advised the European Parliament, the Conseil d'Analyse Economique (part of the French Prime Minister's Office), the UK Department of Trade and Industry and the Wellcome Trust. I am a member of the Editorial advisory Boards of Sociology of Health and Illness and New Genetics and Society.

As regards my research interests in synthetic biology, I am currently a member of a BBSRC working group on synthetic biology, a co-investigator in a recently established multidisciplinary chell network and have co-authored a major review of the social and ethical issues raised by synthetic biology which was published in June 2008.

As regards my research interests in neuroscience, I am leader of a strand of research on neurosociety as part of the £1.6m Leverhulme Trust Programme Grant 'Making Science Public'.

I am working on my monograph titled Monstrous Happiness: Neoliberalism, Women’s Lives and Women’s Writing in Japan and the UK, which developed from my PhD thesis.

I argue that neoliberalism created a particular culture we live now and this contemporary culture is the “harvest” of the 1980s.

Looking at social discourse and literary texts in Japan and the UK in the 80s, I examine the ways in which women writers respond to and explore the ideas of women’s liberty, happiness and its contradictions.

I examine literary texts such as works by Banana Yoshimoto, Foumiko Kometani, Jeanette Winterson and Doris Lessing.

I am currently interested in, as well as writing on, the concept of female masochism, especially its psychic and narrative construction from social discourse, in literary and visual texts.

This new project aims to provide a genealogy of female masochism, and how it differentiates from, as well as inherits, the idea of shame in Japanese culture.

Research Interests

• Affect, Happiness and Neoliberalism
• Comparative Literature
• Contemporary Women's Writing in Japanese and English
• Health, Well-being and Medical Discourses on Women’s Bodies
• Intersections of Gender and Sexuality
• Masochism
• Literary Cognitive Theory

Calum Webb joined the Sheffield Methods Institute as a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow in September 2021, having previously worked as a Research Associate in the Department of Sociological Studies. His research explores socioeconomic inequalities in the child welfare system and their relationship to fiscal and social policy using quantitative research methods. He completed his PhD in Sociology at the University of Sheffield in 2019 as an ESRC-funded White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership student.

His research on child welfare inequalities and the funding of local services for children and young people has been published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Children and Youth Services Review, the Journal of Mixed Methods Research, Child & Family Social Work, and elsewhere. Outside of academic circles, his work has been cited by the National Children’s Bureau, Ofsted, Children England, the British Association of Social Workers, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, the Department for Education, and other organisations.

From 2021-2024 Calum will be leading an innovative new research project as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the British Academy titled “Investment in Prevention and its Systemic Effects (IPSE): Modelling the causal effects of spending in children's services with a whole systems approach.” 

My primary research interests are in colonial and postcolonial literatures from India and Africa, with a particular focus on alternative and global modernisms and writing interested in children, youth and development.

I am currently completing the manuscript of my first monograph, Postcolonial Children: Infancy and Development in South Asian Fiction in English. The book considers the figure of the child in fiction that deals with anti-colonial activism, Indian independence and the postcolonial state, looking at writers including Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Attia Hosain, Shashi Deshpande and Nadeem Aslam.

I am also beginning a new project called ‘Youth and Health in Postcolonial Literatures: India, Nigeria, South Africa’, a comparative analysis of the concept of youth that seeks to make connections between Postcolonial Studies and the growing field of Medical Humanities.

I am a founding member of The Northern Postcolonial Network, which supports knowledge exchange and networking amongst scholars working on postcolonial topics across the north of England and organisations and community groups with intersecting interests. We build sustainable relationships with groups and communities through research, public engagement and creative workshops in which we can explore issues including migration, asylum, human rights and inclusive pedagogy. Details of our past events and future activities can be found here www.northernpostcolonialnetwork.com

I am a member of The British Association of Modernist Studies, the Modernist Studies Association and the Postcolonial Studies Association.

Research interests

My research interests are inflammatory skin disorders including: atopic dermatitis (atopic eczema), psoriasis, alopecia areata and vitiligo. The group which includes both clinical and non-clinical staff has identified genetic variants associated with all of these diseases.

Internationally, the Academic Unit of Dermatology Research is one of the leading groups translating basic dermatological science into new treatments for the clinic. Examples include `Skin Protease Inhibitors´ and `Vitamin A Metabolic Pathway Inhibitors´. In 2001, with help from The Wellcome Trust, the group formed a `spin-out´ company called `Molecular SkinCare´, with the aim of developing these treatments.

Another major focus of the group is the effect of topical pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and oils on the structure and function of the skin barrier. Research in this area comprises investigation of the skin barrier defect associated with skin disorders such as atopic dermatitis, how skin barrier defects develop and how to treat or repair the skin barrier defect. This includes the determination of the effect of topical agents/products on the skin of volunteers visiting our clinical diagnostic `skin laboratory´, where we can measure specific properties of the skin barrier, non-invasively, using an array of specialised equipment. These results are then correlated with variants in the genes that determine the structure and function of the skin barrier.

Research conducted by the AuDR is at the interface between the clinic, academia and industry. Work has been funded by charities, including: The Wellcome Trust, British Skin Foundation and Psoriasis Association; also by the Kuwait Ministry of Health; and by pharmaceutical/cosmetics companies; including Astellas, Johnson & Johnson and Stiefel-GSK.

I have a long-standing interest in understanding the molecular mechanisms controlling the human RNA metabolism in health and neurodegeneration. Research in my group primarily focuses on identifying gene expression alterations which cause progressive death of neurons in incurable neurodegenerative diseases and ageing in order to correct these pathophysiological changes using gene therapy approaches.

To this purpose, we use biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology together with various disease models which include mammalian cell lines, stable inducible cell lines, patient-derived neurons and mouse models. The main research themes currently under investigation in my laboratory are:

1.     Targeting the nuclear export of pathological C9ORF72-repeat transcripts in C9ORF72 linked amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) as well as in Fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS) using gene therapy programmes based on viral and non-viral approaches.

2.     Understanding the molecular mechanisms of pathological repeat-associated non-AUG (RAN) translation in C9ORF72-ALS/FTD and FXTAS in order to identify novel therapeutic targets.

3.     Identification of transcriptomes and translatomes using Next generation RNA sequencing technologies to define the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and how gene therapies/drugs confer neuroprotection.

4.     Structural and functional characterisation of the nuclear export of pathological microsatellite repeat transcripts in neurological disorders.

5.     Identifying the mechanisms leading to altered nucleocytoplasmic transport of proteins and cellular RNA in ageing and neurological disorders.

Lecturer in Work Psychology

Research Interests

I have two established streams of research. Both streams aim to further our knowledge of socially responsible and sustainable practices. One focuses on individual level practices and the other focuses on organisations and industry.

At the individual level, I focus my research on building our understanding of how individuals’ roles and experiences outside of work influence their work lives, and vice versa. To do this I examine the impacts of leisure activities, idiosyncratic deals (‘i-deals’) and interpersonal emotion regulation on employees work and non-work lives. My research contributes to the literature on work-life enrichment by providing a more nuanced understanding of the roles individuals fulfil, beyond the traditional focus on family. It sheds light on broader mechanisms that facilitate individual success and productivity in the workplace. I do this through intensive longitudinal quantitative methods- often referred to as diary studies.

At the organisational and industry level, my research deals with how businesses and public bodies can positively impact wider society.

I have worked on multidisciplinary projects such as:

• Comparative Police Studies in the EU (COMPOSITE), a European project examining policing processes across countries.
• Mainstreaming Assisted Living Technology (MALT), a TSB funded project aiming to facilitate the large scale introduction of telehealth technology.
• Active Workforce Initiative (AWI), a BOHRF funded project examining the impact of positive psychology interventions on the well-being of police and health workers.
• Business Driven Social Change, an NBS funded review of literature on the techniques and outcomes of business driven social change.

PhD Supervision

I am interested in supervising PhD students who would like to examine issues to do with the interface between work and other life domains - this can include work-life balance, enrichment and conflict pertaining to family and leisure domains as well as the impact of supportive supervisor behaviours on work-life balance.

My research practice is situated at the interface of planning, geography and social policy and focuses on exposing and understanding contemporary challenges in urban society and critically analysing the responses of policy and practice.

Much of my career has been spent at the interface of knowledge and action. My work is dominated by an interest in questions of how inequality arises, the associated burdens and benefits, and how to promote social justice. 

These questions have framed my long-standing interest in housing in the UK context.  Decent, secure housing provides more than just a roof over someone’s head. It is a place of safety and security. It can promote health and well-being and inform life chances.

My work has sought to expose and understand inequalities in access to these benefits within the UK housing system; underpinning processes of transformation in the politics of housing; and associated consequences for people and places.

Particular areas of interest include: aspiration and choice in the contemporary housing system; housing and population ageing; the politics and provision of social housing; disadvantage and discrimination in the housing system; and the hidden and neglected experiences of particular groups.

Other long-standing areas of interest include: the new politics of community within public policy making; and place-based experiences of new migrants, community relations and processes of integration.

Dr Po Yang is a Senior Lecturer in Large Scale Data Fusion in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield. He graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from Wuhan University in China in 2004, before being awarded his MSc in Computer Science from the University of Bristol in 2006. In 2010 he graduated with a PhD in Electronic Engineering from the University of Staffordshire. From February 2015 to July 2019, he was a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Liverpool John Moores University. He worked as a Post-doc Research Fellow in Computer Science at the University of Bedfordshire from January 2012 to January 2015. Previously, he has also held the positions of Research Associate in Computer Science at the University of Teeside from September 2008 to February 2010, a Research Assistant in image processing at the University of Salford from March 2010 to December 2011. Since 2006 he has generated over 90 international journal and conference papers in the fields of Pervasive Healthcare, Image Processing, Parallel Computing and RFID related internet of things (IoT) applications.

He serves as an Associate Editor in IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine and IEEE Access.

He has over 12 years full time research experience in computing areas (recent three years working on Pervasive Healthcare), which includes the key participation and local leadership of 6 EU funded projects CALLAS (RA in Affective Computing at Teeside University), IMPACT (RA in Image Processing at Salford University), GPSME, DRINVENTOR, MHA and CHIC (RF in Computer Science at Bedfordshire University) and 3 EPSRC/TSB funded projects.

Dr Po Yang's research interests include: Pervasive Computing, Healthcare Informatics, Data Analytics and Internet of Things (IoT)

Research Interests

Research interests

Much of my early research centred on social care for older people, though it also extended to other aspects of community and health care services and their impact on the lives of service users and carers. More recently, I have focussed on issues of representation in later life, looking at the construction and framing of ageing and care-giving. I draw from a mix of anthropological, social policy, sociological, social gerontological, and feminist perspectives and approaches and the intersection of gender and age has been a key focus of my work. My interests include social and cultural dimensions of ageing, intergenerational relations and informal or family care relationships, which I have explored predominantly through qualitative methods, including interviews, focus groups, observation (participant and non-participant), ethnography, life stories and more recently visual approaches. I recognise the importance of `user involvement´ and interdisciplinarity in research and am committed, in particular, to the development of participatory research, raising questions about how we come to know what we know about the lives of people who use services and the connection of this knowledge with policy and practice.

I have recently completed 2 major research projects:

The social process of everyday decision-making by people with dementia and their spouses, an ESRC-funded study carried out with Dr Geraldine Boyle (PI) which aimed to explore and raise awareness of the decision-making abilities of people with dementia. 

Representing Self – Representing Ageing,  part of the cross disciplinary New Dynamics of Ageing Programme: http://www.newdynamics.group.shef.ac.uk/ and which I carried out, as PI, with Professors Merryn Gott and Susan Hogan. Known more familiarly by the title of Look at Me! Images of Women and Ageing, the project worked with women in Sheffield to explore representations of women and ageing in the media and to produce new images to challenge existing stereotypes: http://www.representing-ageing.com/. I won an ESRC Outstanding Impact in Society Award for the project in 2014 and am continuing to extend the project's impact through activities including intergenerational work in schools.

My other research activities have included:

The ESRC Older Women’s Lives and Voices project, exploring issues affecting the quality of life of older women across different ethnic groups within Sheffield and their involvement in services available to them:

The European Commission funded MERI project (Mapping Existing Research and Identifying Knowledge Gaps Concerning the Situation of Older Women in Europe), a collaborative project involving 13 EC countries and designed to contribute to the development of European studies and policy to improve older women’s lives.

Postgraduate Supervision

I have supervised 9 students to successful completion at PhD (x 8) and MPhil (x 1) levels. I am currently primary supervisor of 1 full-time and 5 part-time PhD students, including a joint location student (Trinidad and Tobago). I welcome applications to study full-time or part-time with me for MPhil or PhD research degrees that are related to my activities and experience. I would be particularly interested in hearing from students who wish to undertake participatory research with older people and carers.