Claire joined the university in February 2005 having completed her MSc in Sport Management (Thesis title: Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme: Managing Business Performance), she went on to complete her sport psychology focused PhD (Thesis title: Existing, Experienced and Informed Realities of Sport Coaching through Transformational Leadership) in 2022.  Claire is a Level 3 athletics coach and supports athletes from across the range of abilities from novice to high performance middle and long distance runners.  Claire is also a qualified Strength and Conditioning Coach and supports the physical preparation of runners as an integral feature of their training approaches.  Claire also brings with her ten years of professional industry experience which includes: business leadership, commercial and operational management at both regional and national levels, in parallel with a breadth of strategic planning, financial and human resource management expertise.  Drawing on this during her time with Northumbria Claire has also focused on the commercial and academic development of our sport programmes through collaborating with national governing bodies of sport.  This includes managing the partnerships and leading the academic development of both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes for British Tennis, British Equestrian Federation, British Rowing and Football League Education.  Claire is also the Deputy Head of Department for Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation.

Claire's research is underpinned by a strong background in management and leadership which is applied across the varied and complex applied contexts of sport.  Since 2014, her research has focused on the analysis of transformational leadership across the spectrum (performance to particiaption) of tennis coaching.  Equally her skills across mixed methods research have been drawn upon to support research collaborations focusing on: strength and conditioning, aerospace medicine and rehabilitation, pediatric nutrition/hydration/cognition in education settings, and more recently pedagogic innovation for sport and exercise science students.