I came to research from healthcare practice, and that background shapes everything about how I work. I trained and practised as a physiotherapist before moving into research, which means I've always been drawn to questions that matter in the real world rather than just on the page. I'm a Vice Chancellor's Research Fellow at Northumbria University, where my work is grounded in theory-led evaluation: the idea that understanding why something works matters as much as whether it does. My current projects include a mixed-methods evaluation of a digital self-management app for low back pain, and developing the initial programme theory for a forthcoming realist evaluation of a national programme tackling workplace cultures around chronic pain. I'm also committed to knowledge translation: finding ways to communicate research findings that don't require a methodology textbook to decode.

My research is rooted in realist methodology — spanning both evaluation and synthesis — and applied to real-world questions in health and healthcare. I'm as interested in developing these methods as I am in applying them — curious about how they can be refined and advanced to stay fit for purpose in the complex, messy reality of health research and practice. Much of my current work focuses on digital health and musculoskeletal conditions, including workplace cultures around chronic pain. Across all of it, I care about making findings genuinely useful to clinicians, commissioners, policymakers, and the people most affected by the issues I study. I lead the NoRTH realist research discussion group and am a member of the IDEAS National Evaluation Team.