I started my research career as an ethologist - I am the world expert on a rare wading bird – before becoming a secondary data analyst and health economist at Guy's and then St Mary’s Hospital (Imperial). There I developed my interest in what were then called ‘real world’ studies, and in cognitive processes, with work on drugs of abuse and on depression and suicide. In parallel I undertook an MSc in Cognitive Neuropsychology at Birkbeck (part time, Distinction), specialising in aphasia and autism with a dissertation on Theory of Mind; this MSc also began my interests in psycholinguistics and in artificial intelligence. I subsequently expanded these methodological interests through conversation analysis and multimodal analysis at the interface with institutional settings, and text mining (information extraction) work.

This background has given me a strong foundation for my sustained methodological interest in the innovative use of approaches such as AI, conversation analysis, behavioural economics, choice models and concept mapping to develop and evaluate complex interventions, implementation and sustainability issues.

In 2003 I joined Queen Mary University of London, working on a Cochrane review of advocacy interventions in domestic violence. This suggested to me the idea, taken up through my PhD in Medical Sociology, of qualitatively exploring the way abused women negotiated their daily lives in the context of their ethnicities. This choice of approach demonstrates the importance I attach to choosing the right method for the research question. Subsequently, I led the NIHR Research Design Service London qualitative methodology stream (covering UCL, KCL, QMUL and Imperial) between 2012-14, and public engagement and involvement work at QMUL from 2006, whilst maintaining my mixed methods portfolio and working on complex interventions development and evaluation for chronic conditions. As such I have been involved in several e- and m-health projects, including a study I led that developed rules-based text mining for the thematic analysis of survey freetext data, as well as cohort, machine learning and qualitative studies. I have contributed to debates on the challenges and usefulness of Big Data in informing complex intervention design. In all cases I aim for my research to have instrumental outputs that lead to changes in policy and practice. Most recently I have been developing work with and for vulnerable and marginalised people including those with hidden conditions and disabilities and migrants, and championing human rights issues. This has been part-fuelled by personal circumstance.

I have edited a special issue on the marginalisation of disability in policy for 'Evidence and Policy' and am the Department Inclusion Lead (Joint role) and on the IoE core Athena SWAN team.

I have recently completed an acclaimed major study (CICADA) on the intersections of ethnicity, disability or chronic conditions and the pandemic, which has provided a unique dataset currently informing government policy and professional and third sector practice.

I sit on the NIHR HS&DR Commissioned and Researcher Led Stage 1 and 2 Funding panel, I am a member of UCL Academic Board. I am on the editorial board of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine