Gemma-Claire Ali is a PhD student using mixed methods research to design strategies to help patients with chronic physical illness and their informal carers to better understand and support their own and each other's mental wellbeing. She completed an undergraduate degree in geography here at the University of Cambridge. For her undergraduate dissertation, she conducted research into the socio-economic factors affecting mental health knowledge, attitudes and help-seeking behaviour in Malaysia. She then studied an MSc in Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and King's College London. Since graduating,she has undertaken a two month internship with the WHO's Western Pacific Regional Office's department for mental health and substance abuse, and worked for two years as a research assistant in global mental health. Research topics during this period included mental health screening tool validity; depression in people living with HIV; and the global prevalence, incidence and costs of dementia.

Stephen Barclay is a clinically active General Practitioner and Palliative Medicine Consultant, bringing clinical perspectives to Primary Care and Palliative Care issues. His research studies have employed a range of research methods: systematic literature reviews, survey research, quantitative data analysis, individual and focus group research, qualitative data analysis. My MSc was in Social Science Research Methods, Statistics and Psychometrics. Stephen's interests focus on palliative care, especially in the primary care setting and medical student education.

Jenny is a health services researcher with both qualitative and quantitative research experience. She originally trained in Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University, before completing (via a stint in PR for health charities) a Masters in Public Health at LSTHM and a PhD in Health Services Research at UCL. Her PhD was a mixed methods study using focused ethnography, interviews and surveys, based in specialist palliative care. Jenni's research career has involved a wide range of methods and methodologies in the areas of palliative and primary care, and has particular interests in doctor-patient communication, patient experience, inequalities in health care, and treatment planning and decisions in long term conditions. She can turn her hand to a range of applied qualitative research approaches, including interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic approaches, has a particular interest in integrative analysis, and is module leader for the new Qualitative and Mixed Methods Approaches course on the MPhil in Primary Care Research.

Saphsa Codling is due to complete an MA in Psychosocial Studies at University of East London (UEL) in May 2016. Her dissertation will focus on the mediating role of attachment against long-term sequelae in child sexual abuse. In 2015, Saphsa enrolled in a project at UEL in collaboration with the Institute of Human Health and Development to identify links between perinatal mental health and housing, largely focussing on the Newham area (London), and is finalising a briefing for circulation later this year. The patron of this project is Francis Hare (House of Lords). Since Sep 2013, Saphsa has been working as a Research Assistant/Research Co-ordinator supporting the research activities of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit.

Laurie Denyer Willis is a medical anthropologist who researches how religion and hope reshape people’s experiences of grief, wellbeing and perceptions of public health systems in Brazil. Based on long-term ethnographic research in Rio de Janeiro’s subúrbios, her research explores how Evangelical communities are reimagining ‘spaces of abandonment’ and the effects of this on health and relations of care and obligation. With a focus on ‘periphery’ communities, her work addresses the ways that people use prayer and belief to make sense of precarity, death and environmental toxicity. She is a Teaching Associate at the Centre of Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge and was previously a teaching fellow in Anthropology and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, MIT and McGill. She is a PhD candidate in Medical Anthropology at McGill University and holds a Masters of Science from MIT in Urban Studies and Planning.

A fellow of both the Academy of Social Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences, Mary Dixon-Woods is RAND Professor of Health Services Research at the Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of BMJ Quality and Safety. She leads a programme of research focused on patient safety and healthcare improvement, healthcare ethics, and methodological innovation in studying healthcare. She holds honorary positions as an adjunct professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and a visiting adjunct professor at Dartmouth College. She was, in 2012, one of the first recipients of a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award. She served on the National Advisory Group on the Safety of Patients in England, which produced the Berwick report in 2013. She is currently serving on the review of information technology in the NHS led by Professor Bob Wachter.

Frances Early completed her PhD in psychology at University College, Cardiff in 1989 and worked in information technology before practising as a business psychologist, mentor and coach in the Cambridge area. Returning to academic study she gained an MSc in Health Psychology from City University, London in 2009. Since then she has been working with the Centre for Self Management Support at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, focussing on service improvement, research and evaluation of self-management support interventions. In 2015 she became affiliated with the Clinical Nursing Research Group in the Primary Care Unit where she collaborates on developing research projects to promote behaviour change within rehabilitation settings. Frances’s research interests include health behaviour theory underpinning self management support, and health behaviour change within rehabilitation, particularly in respiratory and cardiac conditions. Of particular interest is the need to support people to embed health promoting behaviours such as physical activity into their daily lives. She is also interested in ways to promote collaborative relationships between health care providers and service users. Frances is particularly interested in the use of qualitative methods to explore these issues, and has experience of thematic analysis, framework analysis and grounded theory methods.

Morag Farquhar has been a UK health services researcher for over 25 years, predominantly in the field of palliative and supportive care. She worked for health authorities in London, and within the universities of London, Manchester and Cambridge on series of research projects including service evaluations (e.g. practice nurses, paediatric A&E, midwifery teams and breathlessness interventions), studies of patient and carer experiences (e.g. in old age, advanced cancer and non-malignant diseases, and breathlessness in advanced disease) and the development of interventions (e.g. in advanced cancer and non-malignant diseases, and breathlessness in advanced disease).
Morag is a graduate nurse by background (King’s College London). She completed a Masters in Medical Sociology and a PhD (University of London) on the definition and measurement of quality of life in older people. Her research interests include breathlessness in advanced disease, palliative care, quality of life, informal carers, older people, service evaluation, and methodology – particularly the development and testing of interventions (including using randomised controlled trial methodology in palliative care settings) and the use of mixed methods (integrating applied qualitative and quantitative methods where relevant to answer research questions).

Elizabeth is currently working on a project led by Stephen Barclay, investigating decisions about artificial nutrition and hydration made by and for people with progressive neurological conditions.
She has experience of using Thematic Analysis and Discourse Analysis and I have been formally trained in Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Methodology and attended introductory training in Conversation Analysis.

Also, in case of interest, some relevant publications where she has used qualitative techniques to investigate moral aspects of medical practice:

• 'Our health, our care, our say? How the wishes of adults who lack capacity are handled during substitute decision-making'. 9th ‘Seattle Club’ Conference on Research in Intellectual Disabilities 7th & 8th December 2009, University College London.
• Donaldson, T.M., Fistein, E.C., Dunn, M. (2010) ‘Case-based seminars in medical ethics education: how medical students define and discuss moral problems’ Journal of Medical Ethics, 36(12):816-820.
• Fistein, E.C. (2012) ‘Conceptions of the good and the Mental Capacity Act’ in Autonomy and Mental Health ed. Radoilska, L. Oxford University Press (International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry): Oxford.
• Fistein, E.C., Clare, I.C.H., Redley, M. Holland, A.J. (in press) ‘Tensions between policy and practice: a qualitative analysis of decisions regarding compulsory admission to psychiatric hospital’ accepted for publication in International Journal of Law and Psychiatry

Dr Jane Fleming is a senior research associate at the Cambridge Institute of Public Health, University of Cambridge, with a clinical background in nursing, epidemiology training and extensive health services research experience. Current collaborations include a range of applied research and evaluation projects and she co-ordinates one of the longest-running studies of ageing and cognition, the Cambridge City over-75s Cohort Study (www.cc75c.group.cam.ac.uk). Jane’s interests focus on the needs of the growing numbers of “older old” people, many with cognitive impairment or dementia; their experiences and priorities for care towards the end of life; roles that exercise and activity can play in preventing falls, postponing frailty, maximising independence and quality of life; using population-based research to inform policy and practice affecting older people; and mixed methods approaches to understanding policy impacts on older people and their carers.
Contact: http://www.phpc.cam.ac.uk/people/phab/phab-senior-research-staff/dr-jane-fleming/

Cornelia Guell is a medical anthropologist and career development fellow at the MRC Epidemiology Unit and the UKCRC Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR) at the University of Cambridge. Cornelia has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh and has since worked in public health to study how chronic illness and its primary, secondary and tertiary prevention – in practice and policy – shape everyday social lives. She has conducted research in the UK, Germany and the Caribbean region. Currently, Cornelia is working within the Physical Activity and Public Health group, led by David Ogilvie. Her ethnographic research focusses on understanding practices of active and sedentary living of older adults in the EPIC-Norfolk cohort as part of the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing study. Cornelia is also interested in stakeholder engagement and how stakeholders assess, negotiate and apply evidence. Cornelia supervises and supports qualitative social research on physical activity as well as the policy process.

Sarah is a PhD student and research assistant looking at hospital admissions close to the end of life. Her academic training was first in Politics and Sociology (BA, University of Exeter) and then in research methods (MPhil, University of Cambridge). Sarah continues to have a keen interest in both fields: as a postgraduate representative on the British Sociological Association Medical Sociology committee and co-convening the departmental Qualitative Research Forum.
Sarah’s current research uses interviews to explore health-care professional and next-of-kin experiences of care at the end-of-life, and she has previously constructed questionnaires and conducted focus groups with teenagers. Her research focuses on the intersection between policy and practice and, beyond end-of-life care research, Sarah’s main interest is in questions of social inequality. Sarah’s greatest aim is to do research that is sociologically meaningful and usefully contributes to society.

Elka graduated from Sheffield University in 2006 with a BSc in Biomedical Science. In 2007 she joined the Primary Care Unit as a Research Assistant, developing knowledge of randomised controlled trials and qualitative research techniques in primary care. In 2010 she took up a position with University College London as a Trial Coordinator of a biliary tract cancer drug trial, and later moved to Windsor to manage a healthcare quality improvement programme with the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. In 2014 Elka re-joined the Primary Care Unit to undertake an MRC Sackler Prize funded PhD within the Cancer Prevention & Early Diagnosis Group. Her research will be using mixed methods techniques to explore timely diagnosis of oesophageal and gastric cancer.

Professor Mike Kelly is Senior Visiting Fellow in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge and a member of St John’s College. Between 2005 and 2014, when he retired, he was the Director of the Centre for Public Health at the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) where he led the teams producing public health guidelines. From 2005 to 2007 he directed the methodology work stream for the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. This body of work was the first time that a properly evidence based approach to dealing with health inequalities had been attempted by WHO. He has a continuing interest in health inequalities and is pursuing a programme of research in Cambridge on this topic.
He read Sociology and Economics at the University of York. He undertook post graduate training in Sociology at the University of Leicester before taking his PhD in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Dundee. He has held academic appointments at the Universities of Leicester, Dundee, Abertay, Greenwich, Glasgow, Manchester, Oxford and Sheffield, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and UCL as well as Cambridge. He had an academic career lasting twenty seven years before moving into the National Health Service to lead the Research Team at the Health Development Agency and then moving on to NICE.
His research interests include the methods and philosophy of evidence based medicine, prevention of CVD, health inequalities, health related behaviour change, the causes of non-communicable disease, end of life care, dental public health and the sociology of chronic illness.
He has taught courses over the years at undergraduate and post graduate levels in social theory, medical sociology, health promotion, public health and introductory sociology.

Natasha Kriznik is a sociologist and qualitative researcher based in the Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research (CCHSR). Prior to joining CCHSR in August 2016, Natasha worked as the Post-Doctoral Research Associate for the St John’s College Reading Group on Health Inequalities (http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/st-john%E2%80%99s-reading-group-health-inequalities). Before that she studied at Durham University, completing a BA (Hons) in Sociology, an MA in Social Research Methods (Sociology), and a PhD in Applied Social Sciences – Social Policy. Her PhD explored the representation of the problem of health inequality in English public health policy between 1980-2011. Natasha has a broad interest in medical sociology, particularly in relation to health inequalities and public health, as well as the processes related to the production of social policy. She is also interested in social theory and its use in enhancing the outcomes of research. She will be involved in projects relating to healthcare quality and patient safety during her time at CCHSR.

Prior to joining the PCU in July 2010, Katie completed a PhD in "Symptom Triggers for Heartburn: diet and lifestyle factors" at London South Bank University. Within her PhD she completed focus group interviews with sufferers of Heartburn in the community and primary care to understand symptom interpretation, symptom descriptions, trigger factors to enable the design of a further quantitative study.

From July 2010-July 2015 Katie worked with Dr Fiona Walter on the SYMPTOM Study, part of NIHR funded DISCOVERY programme, investigating timely diagnosis of symptomatic cancers. This study recruited patients referred to secondary care with symptoms suspicious of cancer. Within the study there was a nested qualitative study, interviewing patients soon after their referral to understand their symptom appraisal, help-seeking behaviour and pathway to diagnosis. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were undertaken in patients homes. As many patients were not aware of their diagnosis at the time of interview, sensitivity and understanding was required. This was also needed when close relatives were also present in the interviews. Thematic analysis was applied for this dataset.

Katie currently co-ordinates the NIHR MelaTools Programme, assessing patient and GP interventions to improve time to diagnosis of Melanoma. Within this programme of work she will be undertaking interviews with both patients and GPs on the integration of the electronic clinical support tool for Melanoma into GP software packages and usability and functionality of skin self monitoring apps in patients at above population risk of Melanoma to inform a larger randomised controlled trial - thus allowing her to engage with further health services research.

Richard Milne is a qualitative social scientist in the Institute of Public Health. His research uses ethnographic, focus group and interview-based approaches to examine:

• The production, identification and understanding of risk. His current work focusses on issues associated with establishing and communicating risks of developing Alzheimer’s disease and the creation of new ‘pre-disease’ categories and ‘patients in waiting’. Previous work has explored public, scientific and regulatory understandings of the risks associated with the development of new biotechnologies, and scientific and public approaches to food risk.
• Translational research and visions of the future in biomedicine. Drawing on perspectives from sociology and geography his work follows the circuitous movement of research between ‘bench to bedside’ and the role of imagined futures and future geographies in shaping the development of new biotechnologies.
• The implications of changes of changes in knowledge production, data gathering and the social structures of research and research participation within biomedicine.

Jenny holds a PhD from the University of London and BSc in Sociology from the University of Surrey. Jenny specialises in qualitative methods particularly interviews. Her research interests are patient experience, chronic conditions, young people’s health and primary care. She is currently working on the IMPROVE programme analysing video elicitation interviews on patient experience of GP consultations. Jenny also currently leads an NIHR project on telephone triage as an alternative to face to face contact in GP consultations.

Nadia is a GP and a NIHR in-practice research fellow in the Primary Care Cancer Group led by Fiona Walter. Her interest in the social context of health and illness led her to take a year out of Manchester Medical School to undertake an MA in Medical Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London, 2007). After postgraduate clinical training in London, she completed her GP training and, at the same time, an MPhil in Primary Care Research in Cambridge (2014); she now works as a GP in Birmingham. Her research interest relates to the doctor/patient relationship and, in particular, how better understanding patients’ experience of healthcare can contribute to healthcare improvement. Working in the Primary Care Unit in Cambridge, she has become interested in the variety of qualitative methodologies and analytical approaches used to explore patients’ perspectives, and in the rationale that underlies these methodological choices. Nadia previously worked with the Health Services Research team conducting video-elicitation interviews with patients on their experience of primary care consultations; this work formed the basis of her MPhil dissertation. She is currently studying, under the supervision of Fiona Walter, the healthcare experience of patients recently diagnosed with melanoma; she is also, in collaboration with Ahmed Rashid, conducting a qualitative synthesis of patients’ experience of medication-taking.

Dr Elisa Liberati is a social scientist based in the Primary Care Unit in the School of Clinical Medicine. Elisa's background is in organisational psychology and social science; she holds an MA in Work and Organisational Psychology and a PhD in Psychology from the Università Cattolica di Milano, Italy (with the additional title of Doctor Europaeus). Elisa’s research interests include quality and safety in healthcare; the social organisation of medical work; inter-professional and inter-disciplinary boundaries and their effect on care delivery. She is an experienced qualitative researcher and has a specific interest in ethnography; she has recently examined the potentialities and challenges of ‘patient shadowing’ as a patient-centred research method. Although her research has an academic focus Elisa is also committed to producing pragmatic and actionable knowledge, which can be used by clinicians and healthcare managers to support quality improvement and organisational development.

Dr Charlotte Paddison is a Health Psychologist. She is interested in applying social science theory to explore questions of ‘real-world’ importance to the practice of clinical medicine: for example, how do we improve care for people with multimorbidity? Topics of particular interest include: professionalism and decision-making in the context of uncertainty; understandings of the use and non use of medicines; notions of ‘quality’ in health care; and the experience of multimorbidity.

Charlotte’s previous research as an ESRC post-doctoral fellow focused on the psychological impacts of diabetes screening as part of the Wellcome Trust-funded ADDITION study (BMJ), and on patient experience in primary care (e.g. BMJ Open, BMC family practice).

Clarissa studied Social and Political Sciences at undergraduate degree level, before undertaking a postgraduate master’s degree (MA) in Sociological Research. From 2001 she worked as a researcher across a wide range of applied research and policy areas, including for the Institute of Criminal Policy Research, NatCen Social Research and the National Nursing Research Unit. The common theme has been methodological specialisation in qualitative research methods, in particular the conduct and analysis of in-depth interviews. She haa expertise in topic guide development, in-depth interviewing skills, and the Framework Method for the management and analysis of qualitative data using NVivo (qualitative data analysis computer software package).

Mila's current project is on data sharing in end of life care – a mixed methods study drawing on Pawson’s realist evaluation ideas. Most of her research has been in end of life care; theoretical issues of evidence synthesis; search strategy development; “health-related values”; and change in primary care. She is currently developing a project on palliative and end of life care in humanitarian emergencies.

Mila's training is in psychology, philosophy and literature. She gets drawn to questions of acute practical relevance and proximity to big topics steeped in contradictions of opinion and evidence. Mila studies them by combining evidence from multiple sources, both gold standard and prima facie strange ones, and concepts and approaches from the various fields she has been trained in. Theoretically, she often draws on psychodynamic theories of human motivation and action and research into cognitive biases. In terms of analytic approach, she likea to borrow from analytic philosophers’ rigour of argumentation and good literature writers’ extreme care with words.

Sophie completed her PhD at the Centre for Child and Family Studies, Leiden University. She conducted her doctoral study on psychophysiological risk factors for child maltreatment by measuring stress reactivity of the autonomic nervous system in a sample of abusive and/or neglectful mothers. In addition she assessed mothers’ attachment representation, that is, their state of mind toward the relationship with their parents and regarding potentially traumatic experiences. She is a certified coder of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). In January 2016 Sophie joined the Applied Social Science Group at the Institute of Public Health to study, among other things, the long-term physical health effects of infant attachment.

Dr Judith Solomon holds a Visiting Research Fellowship in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. She is internationally recognised for her research and theory-building on attachment and caregiving, including the introduction of the disorganised attachment classification and the first longitudinal study of infants in separated and divorced families.

With Carol George, she developed key representational measures of caregiving and child attachment, including the Caregiving Interview, the Attachment Doll Play Projective Assessment, and the Maternal Helplessness Questionnaire. She also served as co-editor of Attachment Disorganization (Guilford Publications,1999) and Disorganized Attachment and Caregiving (Guilford Publications, 2011).

In 2013, she was a Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna, where she taught and did research in the Department of Evolutionary Biology. Solomon frequently presents workshops and training seminars on attachment and parenting relationships. She also is a licensed clinical psychologist and provides consultation, training, and supervision in the area of infant and early childhood mental health.

Brooke is a Chartered Psychologist. Her research looks at care provision for those diagnosed with a life-limiting condition and their family members, with specific interests in the provision of psychological support at end of life and after a bereavement. Alongside her role in the PCU, Brooke works part time as a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Chester, and is also the early-career member of the NCRI Psychosocial and Survivorship Clinical Studies Group and a member of the British Psychosocial Oncology Society Executive Committee. Brooke has experience of both quantitative and qualitative research methods, with a particular strength in interpretative qualitative research designs. Previously utilised research methods include: interpretative phenomenological analysis; thematic analysis; framework analysis; systematic review; moderation and mediation analysis.

Silja is a health psychologist developing behaviour change interventions using web and mobile phone technology. She is in the final year of her PhD in the Behavioural Science Group, led by Professor Stephen Sutton in the Institute of Public Health. Silja undertakes mixed-methods research with adolescents in her home country of Estonia and is developing a web and mobile phone intervention programme to reduce their alcohol and tobacco consumption.

Fiona Walter is a GP with a great deal of experience in qualitative research methods in the healthcare setting. Her MD included a qualitative synthesis on lay understanding of familial risk of common chronic diseases; it drew on meta-ethnographical approaches, was the first to incorporate a systematic review of the literature, and has >50 citations. Since then she has led the cancer group, focusing on patient and GP experiences of the pathway to a cancer diagnosis, often with the theoretical underpinning of the Model of Pathways to Treatment (Walter et al, 2012). She has national and international collaborations undertaking research on a number of cancers and the impact of patient, healthcare and disease factors on timely diagnosis. Fiona has taught qualitative and mixed methods research methods to healthcare professionals and masters courses.

Ian Wellwood is a research physiotherapist working in the Clinical Nursing Research Group in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care. His multidisciplinary research has largely focused on rehabilitation and care in people with long term conditions, in particular stroke and has included clinical trials, observational studies and mixed methods research.