Professor Ian Albery, Centre Executive Committee Member
Professor Ian Albery is Professor of Psychology in the Division of Psychology and Founding Head of the Centre for Addictive Behaviours Research at London South Bank University. His research interests are focused on understanding individuals’ health behaviours. More specifically he is interested in those cognitive and social identity processes that have been used to examine health behaviours, most particularly addictive behaviours.
Professor Antony Moss, Deputy Director of PHIRST South Bank
Professor Tony Moss is Deputy Director of PHIRST London, Professor of Addictive Behaviour Science and Associate Pro Vice Chancellor Education and Student Experience.
Tony’s research interests are primarily focused on the public health aspects of addiction. Connecting both his research and learning and teaching roles is a passion for understanding and promoting inclusivity and equality.
Tony’s particular research interest is on understanding the needs of individuals who experience harms from substances and behaviours which we generally think of as being ‘addictive’. Addiction is generally thought about as an all-or-nothing condition – you are either addicted to something or not. In reality, many people can experience harms from substances and activities such as alcohol and gambling, and this harm exists along a broad spectrum. He is interested in understanding how we can both help people to recognise the harms that can arise, but also exploring better ways of supporting people who do experience those harms.
Professor Susie Sykes, PHIRST South Bank Director
Susie Sykes is Professor of Public Health and Health Promotion and is the Director of PHIRST LSBU. She is a member of the Centre for Applied Research in Improvement and Innovation within the Institute of Health and Social care and co-chairs the Population Health and Prevention Research Group. Her main research interests lie in health literacy, community health and public health workforce development.
Mrs Irene Soulsby, Public Representative
I’m a cancer survivor and always say that “I’m here because of research”. However, research can take many forms, and about 10 years ago I accidentally came across Public Involvement at Newcastle University. Since then, I have taken part in many projects about health. This led me to becoming a public member of the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration for the North East and North Cumbria, and also the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Behavioural Science
I became a member of PHIRST Fusion late in 2021 and have so far been involved in observing projects, so I can get an idea of what it’s all about. I’m really enjoying being part of PHIRST and hope to bring my experience of the last 10 years into the projects. It’s great to have the opportunity of being involved!
Dr Nai Ru Chng, Research Associate, University of Glasgow
Nai Rui Chng is a Political Scientist with an interest in the development and evaluation of complex interventions in health, social and environmental policy domains. He is a versatile qualitative researcher who works in high, middle and low-income countries. Nai is currently researching on the evaluability of policies and programmes through his work on Evaluability Assessment at the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit where he is writing guidance. He is a Co-Investigator on: 1) An UKRI-MRC-funded project SPEEDIER, a disease control intervention supporting the Philippine government’s vision of Rabies freedom, and 2) An UKRI-NERC-funded project GALLANT, a partnership with Glasgow City Council to transform Glasgow into a living lab to trial new sustainable solutions throughout the city. Nai is also the founding Director of Good Evaluation, an Aspect supported Social Science commercialisation spin-out project at the University of Glasgow. Good Evaluation is a social venture employing Evaluation Science and thinking to develop and improve solutions which advances the health and well-being of people and society.
Dr Andrew Passey, Research Associate – Knowledge Exchange, Newcastle University
Andrew is a PHIRST Knowledge Broker, where he works with a wide range of policy and practice partner organisations in the field of public health. He brokers selected intervention evaluations, undertakes evaluability assessments, and engages with knowledge users to help ensure PHIRST projects generate accessible and timely knowledge. Andrew’s current research interests are in public services co-production, approaches to the evaluation of knowledge mobilisation activities, and complexity in evaluation of public health interventions. Before his PhD, he spent 12 years as a policy maker in the UK civil service including at HM Treasury and the Department of Health, worked for two years as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Technology in Sydney, and spent eight years as a researcher in the UK voluntary sector.
Dr Peter van der Graaf, Fuse Knowledge Exchange Broker NIHR Knowledge Mobilisation Research Fellow and lead for AskFuse, the responsive research service for public health policy makers and practitioners in NE England.
Peter is an Associate Professor at Northumbria University, where he manages the AskFuse service. He is also an NIHR Knowledge Mobilisation Research Fellow.
AskFuse is the rapid response and evaluation service of Fuse, the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health, which supports collaborative projects between academics and policy and practice partners in the North East of England and beyond.
His NIHR KMR Fellowship evaluates and support the North East System-Led Improvement approach for Best Start in Life (SLI BSIL), led by the 12 Directors of Public Health in the region to improve the commissioning of early years’ services and the evidence that is used to inform these services.
For both roles, Peter draws upon his extensive career in applying research evidence and translating knowledge from the Social Sciences and Health, both in the Netherlands and the UK.
Peter is interested in the interface between research, practice and policy making and how this interface facilitates (or hinders) social improvement processes at local, regional, national and international levels. He conducts research on knowledge mobilisation in public health, with a focus on the wider determinants of health (e.g. housing, health landscapes, urban regeneration) and how they affect people’s health and wellbeing.
Dr Peter Craig , research lead on Knowledge Transfer and Exchange, co-lead of the Inequalities Programme at the MRC/CSO Social & Public Health Sciences Unit (SPHSU).
Peter uses natural experiments and other methods to evaluate the impacts of public policies and other complex interventions on health and health inequalities. He is particularly interested in social protection policies, but has also researched many other kinds of intervention, from prison smoking bans to rabies prevention. His work spans both high income and low-middle income countries. He is the lead author of the MRC’s guidance on using natural experiments to evaluate population health interventions and was part of the team behind the recent update of the MRC/NIHR framework for evaluating complex interventions. Before joining the University of Glasgow, he spent 25 years working in central government, first in Whitehall and then in the Scottish Government. His experience of working in both academic and non-academic settings underpins his conviction that evaluation, to be most useful, should be designed and planned jointly by producers and users of research evidence.
Professor Ruth Jepson, centre lead for the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy (SCPHRP):
Ruth is Director of SCPHRP and a Reader in Public Health in the School of Health in Social Science, University of Edinburgh. Ruth has been involved in many different aspects of public health research for over 20 years. After completing her MSc in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, she spent over 10 years in the Cochrane Collaboration as a Review Group Co-ordinator, as a reviewer and on many of the Committees. She also worked at the NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination in York University. She returned to the University of Edinburgh to undertake her PhD on developing a measure of informed choice in cancer screening. Prior her role in SCPHRP, she was at the of Stirling University where she was Co-Director of the Centre for Population and Public Health and Lead for the Physical Activity and Diet Research Programme.
Director of the Centre of Excellence for Public Health, Northern Ireland.
Professor Kee is the Director of the Centre for Public Health in the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, and previously directed one of the UKCRC Centres of Excellence for Public Health Research (2008-2018).
He currently serves on a number of UKRI scientific advisory and funding panels including the MRC Career Development Awards and Fellowship panel, the Better Methods for Better Research Panel and the Longitudinal Studies Panel, having previously served on the MRC Population and Systems Medicine panel and the Public Health Intervention Development Panel.
He previously chaired the NIHR Public Health Funding Board (until 2019) and sits on the Advisory Board for the NIHR School of Public Health.
Director of Fuse, Centre for Translational Research in Public Health
Professor Ashley Adamson is the Director of the NIHR School for Public Health Research.
The School undertakes research into public health with an emphasis on what works practically, can be applied across the country and better meets the needs of policy makers, practitioners and the public. Professor Adamson is Professor of Public Health Nutrition at Newcastle University and Director of Fuse, the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health. In 2009 she joined the Institute of Health & Society where she leads the Public Health Improvement research theme. She was awarded a personal chair in 2010, Fellowship of Faculty of Public Health in 2011 and an NIHR Research Professorship in 2012. Professor Adamson was appointed Director of Fuse in 2016.
Professor Elizabeth Goyder (University of Sheffield), academic lead for the Yorkshire and Humber Public Health Practice & Research Collaborative (PaRC).
Liddy is Professor of Public Health in the School for Health & Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield and an honorary consultant in Public Health in the Office of Health Improvement & Disparities, Department of Health & Social Care (OHID, DHSC). She is the Sheffield lead for the NIHR School of Public Health Research and Director of Research for the National Centre for Sport & Exercise Medicine in Sheffield with a focus on the role of physical activity at a population and communities level to promoting health and wellbeing and reduce inequalities. She leads the NIHR Public Health Research Review Team which delivers evidence synthesis to inform national policy and practice. Recent topics include interventions to address gambling related harms, impacts of working from home, student mental health and access to local authority services for ethnic minority communities.
