I joined IHHD in 2015 to lead the project “Low Birth-Weight in Newham: Definitions, Antecedents and Consequences” which aims to understand factors influencing low birth-weight, identify community assets that can address the issues, and involve stakeholders in preventive action. After a year’s mixed-methods research in hospital and community settings, we are piloting a pre-pregnancy care intervention, and producing a video about initiatives that promote healthy infant feeding with 1-to-1 and group support for parents. From 2009 to 2014, I worked at King’s College London and Plymouth University on three multi-site organisational case studies funded by the National Institute for Health Research. The studies were about women’s birth choices (Birthplace in England programme), midwife-led birth centres, and decision-making about admission and discharge in hospital emergency departments across south-west England. I coordinated the User Participation Group in King’s College’s Centre for Patient Safety & Service Quality, and was a founder member of the gender and feminist theory network Gender Matters @ King’s. Up until 2009 I worked internationally as researcher, evaluator and lecturer in the fields of sexual and reproductive health, gender and sexual diversity, and development studies. My doctoral thesis in Sociology (Trinity College Dublin, 2003) was on Bolivian hospital doctors’ changing voices about abortion, and their treatment of women hospitalised with abortion complications. While working in Bolivia and other Latin American countries, I have had an advocacy role in women’s health campaigns which have influenced population and development policy at national and international levels. I served on Reproductive Health Matters Editorial Advisory Board from 1997-2011, and on the Advisory Committee of the Latin American Consortium Against Unsafe Abortion from 2008-10. I was a World Health Organization Temporary Adviser in the Consultation to Define Priorities for Sexual Health for 2004-2009. I am a peer reviewer for Sociology of Health & Illness, Social Science & Medicine, Health, Risk & Society, Midwifery, and Evaluation. I am a member of UEL’s Volunteering Development Group, convene IHHD’s Volunteering Strategy and Time-bank Task Group, and participate as mentor in UEL’s Athena SWAN Mentoring Development Programme.

Participatory methodologies; Patient and Public Involvement; participatory action-research; participatory advocacy; peer ethnography; community engagement; training and working with community co-researchers, service user-researchers, and volunteers interested in acquiring and practising research skills Qualitative methodologies; auto/biographical method; grounded theory; ethnography; discourse analysis; conversation analysis; mapping of social actors; Actor-Network Theory; use of NVivo software for data coding and analysis Research ethics and politics; ethnic, social, cultural and linguistic diversity and inclusion Gender studies; masculinities; sexual and gender diversity; Queer studies; sexual and reproductive rights; gender-based violence Women’s health; sexual and reproductive health; contraception; abortion and post-abortion care; pregnancy and childbirth; HIV/AIDS; life-course approach