Briefly, could you tell us about your background and career up to this point?
I actually completed my nursing training at King's 10 years ago, so in many ways this feels like coming full circle! My nursing career has been predominantly in clinical research delivery, but I also spent some time in cardiothoracic surgery, critical care and the emergency department.
Healthcare research has always been a passion of mine. Alongside my clinical role, I completed a Masters in Evidence-Based Healthcare at the University of Oxford, followed by a PhD at University College London, where my research focused on the impact of providing end-of-life prognoses to people living with advanced cancer.
Following my PhD, I was appointed as a Lecturer at King's, where I now lead the MSc in Clinical Research Delivery, a programme designed to build capacity and confidence in healthcare professionals to lead and support clinical research. I feel very fortunate to be in a role that allows me to combine two things I care deeply about: developing research capability in healthcare professionals and advancing the evidence base around prognostication in advanced cancer.
You were recently awarded an NIHR Senior Leader Award – this programme aims to drive improvements in health and social care through research. What will be your priorities in your new role?
My overarching priority is to ensure that research is not seen as something that happens alongside clinical care but as something that is embedded within it. That starts with the workforce. I will be undertaking this work across King’s and King’s College Hospital (KCH).
One of my first focuses will be on visibility: making research a tangible and exciting part of working life for nursing and midwifery staff from the very beginning of their careers. I want to work both King's College London and KCH Trusts to integrate research into nursing education, preceptorship programmes and ward-based working so that every new nurse and midwife understands the role they can play in delivering and shaping research from day one. Too often, research feels like something that belongs to a small group of specialists; I want to change that culture.
Equally important is making research visible and accessible to patients themselves. I am keen to develop a dedicated research hub: a space, whether physical, digital or both, where patients can easily find out what research is currently taking place within KCH and volunteer to get involved. Patients are not just the beneficiaries of research; they are essential partners in it. At the moment, there is no easy “front door” for someone who wants to participate. Removing that barrier could meaningfully increase recruitment into studies while also deepening public trust in what we do.
Perhaps one of the most ambitious priorities I am bringing to this role is the development of a national database to track clinical academic careers in nursing and midwifery. Currently, there is simply no systematic way of knowing what research skills and experience exist within our nursing and midwifery workforce and that invisibility has real consequences for how we plan, support and grow research capacity nationally. A national dataset would allow us to understand where talent exists, identify gaps in access and opportunity and make the case for targeted investment.
Underpinning all of this is a belief that improving access to research, whether for a newly qualified nurse finding their feet on a ward, or a patient wanting to contribute to science, is one of the most powerful levers we have for improving health outcomes at scale.
As a member of the King’s Health Partners Working Group for Nurses, Midwives and Allied Health Professionals (NMAHPs+), will this network be helpful in your new role as an NIHR Senior Research Leader?
Absolutely – I think having a dedicated working group for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals is enormously powerful because it means there is already an established network of people who are committed to elevating the research profile of these professions and I can hit the ground running rather than building those relationships from scratch.
In practical terms, I see the network being helpful in several ways. First, it gives me a platform to begin embedding research into workforce culture at scale; if I want to reach nursing and midwifery staff from induction onwards, working through an established cross-organisational group is far more effective than trying to do that institution by institution. Second, the network represents exactly the kind of senior clinical and academic voices that will be essential in making the case for a national database tracking clinical academic careers in nursing and midwifery. Building support and momentum for that kind of infrastructure requires credible champions across the system and this group is well placed to be part of that conversation.
More broadly, I think one of the most important things the NMAHP+ Working Group can do is help shift the narrative by making visible the enormous contribution that nurses, midwives and AHPs already make to research and creating the conditions for the next generation to see a clinical academic career as genuinely achievable. I am really excited about what we can do collectively and I hope that my Senior Leader Award will in turn bring additional resource and profile to the work of the group as a whole.
How can organisations like King’s Clinical Academic Training Office support future work in research capacity building?
King's Clinical Academic Training Office (KCATO) are absolutely central to the kind of systemic change I am trying to drive and I think they can support this work in several important ways.
First and most fundamentally, KCATO provides the infrastructure that individual researchers simply cannot create alone. Building research capacity across a workforce requires coordinated training pathways, mentorship structures and funding navigation support and KCATO is uniquely positioned to offer all of these at scale. For nurses and midwives in particular who have historically had fewer clearly signposted routes into clinical academic careers, having a dedicated office that understands the landscape and can guide people through it is genuinely transformative.
I also see KCATO as a key partner in the work I want to do around visibility. If we are serious about introducing nursing and midwifery staff to research from induction onwards, that message is far more powerful when it comes with a clear sense of what the pathway looks like; what opportunities exist, what support is available and what a clinical academic career could realistically mean for someone at the beginning of their journey. KCATO can give that ambition real shape and credibility.
Looking ahead, I think KCATO could also play a meaningful role in contributing to a national picture of clinical academic workforce development. The kind of data and intelligence that a well-connected training office accumulates over time, about who is progressing, where the gaps are and what interventions make a difference, is exactly the kind of insight that would feed into and strengthen the national database I am hoping to develop.
What is your favourite thing about working at King’s?
Having trained here as a nurse ten years ago and now leading a Master’s programme from this same institution, I won't pretend there isn't something personal about working at King’s. It has shaped my career in ways I could not have anticipated and I feel incredibly fortunate to now be in a position where I can give something back.
What do you do with your time outside of work?
My husband and I are constantly on the hunt for the best local coffee, so I can often be found exploring a new café somewhere (recommendations are always very welcome!) When I'm not doing that, I love going for long walks with a good podcast.