Methodologists

Dr Bronia Arnott

Newcastle University

Dr Bronia Arnott is a Methodologist having worked across research, policy, and practice since completing a PhD focussed on the critical first 1001 days of life.

Bronia is also a Public and Patient Involvement Engagement Methodologist with the NIHR Research Support Service Hub delivered by Newcastle University and Partners. She also leads the NIHR School for Public Health Research Voluntary Sector Evaluation Scheme pilot and is a Knowledge Exchange Broker in Public Health for NIHR PHIRST Fusion. Bronia blends research, practice and lived experience to improve outcomes and decrease inequalities.

Dr Laura Basterfield

Newcastle University

Laura is a Senior Research Associate at Newcastle University, whose research focuses on physical fitness and mental wellbeing in children and young people. She provides methodology support to the SCPH in quantitative methods.

Dr Erica Cook

University of Bedfordshire

Dr Erica Cook is a Registered Health Psychologist and Associate Professor at the University of Bedfordshire, with expertise in behaviour change, evaluating public health interventions to address health inequalities, and research inclusion. She has conducted research in areas including green spaces, vaccination uptake and end-of-life care.

Erica has been a research advisor for over 10 years, delivered by Newcastle and Partners and the former NIHR East of England Research Design Service.

Erica has expertise in mixed-methods research, including outcome and process evaluations, and qualitative research.

Erica has been a research advisor for over 10 years, delivered by Newcastle and Partners and the former NIHR East of England Research Design Service.

Erica has expertise in mixed-methods research, including outcome and process evaluations, and qualitative research.

Dr Sian De Bell

South West Satellite

Sian is a Methodologist at the South West Satellite, providing funding advice and supporting research development. She also works as a Research Fellow in the Exeter HSDR Evidence Synthesis Centre, conducting systematic reviews and other syntheses of evidence about the organisation and delivery of health and social care in the UK, with recent projects including a scoping review of extra-care housing for older people in the UK and a qualitative evidence synthesis of healthcare workforce reconfiguration during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her background is as an environmental social scientist, and she still explores the links between natural environments and human health and wellbeing using participatory methods and approaches such as citizen science.

Dr Dorcas Karethi

Newcastle University

Dorcas Kareithi is statistician with the Biostatistics Research Group at Newcastle University, UK and holds a MSc. in Biometry/Biostatistics from the University of Nairobi and a BSc. in Economics and Mathematics, Kabarak University. Dorcas has over a decade of experience in the health industry as an analyst, researcher and epidemiological consultant, working with several organizations in Africa and abroad to develop, implement and evaluate health products and services.

Dorcas provides methodology support to the SCPH in public health, quantitative methods, study design and statistics. Read about her profile at Newcastle University here: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/medical-sciences/people/profile/dorcaskareithi.html

Dr Lauren Hall

Midlands Satellite

Lauren is a Research Fellow in the Department of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Birmingham. As a Methodologist at the NIHR RSS Specialist Centre for Public Health, Lauren is part of a dynamic team of methodologists focused on advancing research methods and providing grant application and funding advice. With a background in Sociology, her expertise lies within qualitative research, with a particular interest in areas of Governance and Ethics, as well as Public and Patient Involvement.

Dr Deborah Harrison

Methodologist

Deborah Harrison joined the team in May 2025 as a Research Design Methodologist. Her background is in public sector research and policy development on a range of issues including child poverty, homelessness, fuel poverty and mental health.

Deborah’s methodological expertise includes applied, mixed methods service evaluation and system-level approaches. Current research interests include job quality and the future of work in frontline public services, particularly health and social care. Deborah has worked with organisations including local authorities, VCSE organisations, emergency services and the NHS. Before joining academia, she worked in a range of third sector positions including Coordinator of the North East Child Poverty Commission (NECPC), Research and Policy Officer at National Energy Action (NEA) and Service Designer for the national homelessness charity Crisis. Deborah is passionate about participatory methods and the involvement of people with lived experience in research and policymaking.

Dan Lewer

Yorkshire and Humber Satellite

Dan is a methodologist who supports the Yorkshire and Humber satellite, he specialises in causal analysis of observational data, and is particularly interested in within-case comparisons, nested case control and matched cohort designs, and simulation-based approaches to create intuitive effect estimates. . Dan leads the Bradford Centre for Health Data Science. He is an epidemiologist who focuses on mental health (particularly for young people), the way the healthcare system treats people with stigmatising conditions such as drug and alcohol dependence, and social exclusion. Dan is also a Public Health Consultant and a member of the NIHR Public health research funding committee.

Dr Nan Lin

Newcastle University

Nan Lin is a Senior Lecturer in Biostatistics within the Biostatistics Research Group at the Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University. His research interests focus on statistical methodology and medical applications, including:

Time-to-event data, survival analysis, Cox models, recurrent events, and multivariate failure-time data
Cross-over, before-and-after, and difference-in-differences designs, with sample size and power calculations
Electronic medical record (EMR) data
Sensitivity analysis and statistical testing
Uncertainty quantification
Confounding and causal inference
Quasi-likelihood methods
Model misspecification

Liz O'Nions

Yorkshire and Humber Satellite

Liz O'Nions is a Methodologist in the Yorkshire and Humber Satellite alongside her role as an epidemiologist at Bradford Institute for Health Research. Before this, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at UCL, and has previously worked at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust, and at KU Leuven, in Belgium. Liz completed a PhD (2010 – 2014) at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London.

Dr Anna Price

South West Satellite

Dr Anna Price is an Associate Professor in Primary Care and Children and Young People's Mental Health at the University of Exeter. Her research — co-located between the Exeter Collaboration for Academic Primary Care (APEx), and the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Research Collaboration (ChYMe) — focuses on neurodevelopmental differences, healthcare transitions, and digital health technologies. She has extensive experience in primary care delivery, and mixed-methods co-production research, working collaboratively with a wide range of research partners, including people with lived experience.

As a Methodologist for the South West Satellite, Anna brings expertise in public involvement, neurodevelopmental research, service mapping, and mixed-methods design. She also co-leads the APEx Mental Health Theme and the Science of ADHD & Neurodevelopment Collaboration (SAND).

Sophie Robinson

South West Satellite

Sophie joined the South West Satellite as a Methodologist in 2025. She has worked at the University of Exeter since 2016. She an Information Specialist for PenTAG at where she carries out and evaluates clinical and cost effectiveness literature searches for NICE Health Technology Assessements (HTAs). She also works for the Public Health Reviews team conducting systematic reviews for NIHR and the University of Exeter. She previously worked in a variety of roles including as a Senior Information Manager for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and as an Information Specialist in the NHS and voluntary sector.

Sophie is interested in methods for designing and conducting literature searches and in systematic review methods. She is one of the editors of the Information Specialists Subgroup (ISSG), search filters website, which is a collaborative venture to identify, assess and test search filters designed to retrieve research by study design or focus.

Dr Charlotte Rothwell

Newcastle University

Charlotte is a Senior Research Associate at Newcastle University, her research areas of interest are related to obesity and weight management and health and workplace health and wellbeing interventions. She also has expertise in healthcare education in the workplace. Charlotte provides methodological support in qualitative, realsit and mixed methods research.

Dr Rohini Terry

South West Satellite

Rohini joined the South West Satellite in September 2025 as a Methodologist, she is also Research Fellow at the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration South West Peninsula (PenARC) based at the University of Exeter.

Rohini has first degree in psychology and completed her PhD in 2006. She has since gained extensive experience in designing, supporting and conducting research related to health and social care and has previously worked as a research advisor with the former NIHR Research Design Service. She has a particular interest and expertise in complex interventions and qualitative research, research inclusion and supporting research capacity building outside of NHS settings.

Dr Helen Munro Wilde

University of Hertfordshire

Helen works is a mixed-methods researcher based at the University of Hertfordshire. Besides her PhD, she has an MSc in Epidemiology and public health experience at the national, regional and local authority level. She works within a team who specialise in scale development - both PREMs and PROMs, as well as leading study recruitment in UK schools as part of the European BootStRaP study (https://www.internetandme.eu/). Her focus is in psychosocial health and self-management, specifically in relation to long-term conditions (e.g. kidney disease) and mobile phone use and mental health in teenagers.

Dr Megan Wood

Bradford Centre for Health Data Science

Megan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Bradford Centre for Health Data Science where her research focuses on social media use in adolescents and how this may influence mental health outcomes. She is a quantitative methodologist within the NIHR RSS Specialist Centre for Public Health with a background in Psychology. Her expertise lies within the analysis of administrative and cohort data to better understand children’s health and education outcomes.

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