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Sophie Beckett outside the Louvre
Birmingham Museums Trust
2 June 2025
Meet Sophie Beckett, Public Health Research Officer from Birmingham Museums Trust. Sophie was awarded funding through our Public Health Grassroots Awards pilot earlier this year.
Sophie is in the early stages of her research journey, and used her pilot funding to successfully complete a Masters of Public Health one-week intense module in Health System Policy, Planning, and Programming at University of Birmingham. This will support her to create a toolkit for museums on how to use Implementation Science in creative health activities.
The funding Sophie received covered the cost of the training, bought out Sophie’s time to attend the course, and paid for her travel.
Sophie said: “One of the highlights of the course was the fantastic range of experts who came to teach – I was able to network with health professionals from around the world and left with multiple new connections”.
Sophie did the intensive short course to dip her toes into the public health research field, as her background is in human geography. Attending the course allowed Sophie to consider her next research career steps, and this is something she hopes to pursue over the next 12 months, she is keen to explore an NIHR pre-doctoral fellowship.
During the course, Sophie spoke with Professors and Lecturers from University of Birmingham about her idea for the implementation toolkit. This aligned with some of the work the university want to do and led to Sophie being offered a role with University of Birmingham.
The role will allow her to develop an implementation toolkit, whilst also supporting her to write and publish a paper on her existing work in this area.
The vision for the implementation toolkit is to increase the quality and impact of creative health work in museum spaces, evidencing the wider value of museums in health systems. This aligns with a wider shift within heritage spaces to operate as sites for social change in cities.
Laura Renwick, Public Health Senior Research Manager added: “The vision for the Public Health Grassroots Awards is to foster a culture of research within public health at the grassroots level, empowering more individuals to contribute to innovative and informed practices that improve public health and reduce inequalities.
“To see Sophie flourish from the opportunities the funding provided for her is brilliant. I’d like to congratulate Sophie and wish her every success as she moves forward in her public health research journey.”
Sophie was able to undertake this opportunity thanks to funding from the NIHR RSS Specialist Centre for Public Health’s Public Health Grassroots Awards pilot.
The first Public Health Grassroots Award call closed on Thursday 19 June and outcomes will be announced to individuals on Wednesday 9 June. We plan to launch our second Public Health Grassroots Award call towards the end of 2025.
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