Core Staff
Paul Willis – Centre Director
Mel Meindl – Research Associate
Alex Williams – Centre Manager
Sofia Vougioukalou, Research Fellow
Jeremy Dixon – Reader
Richard Gater – Research Assistant
Executive Team
Paul Willis
Paul is a Professor of Adult Social Care, a registered social worker, and the inaugural Director of CARE – the Centre for Adult Social Care Research, based in the School of Social Sciences and located at sbarc/ spark. His research background is in social gerontology and his research focuses on issues of social inclusion and care in later life, particularly for older people belonging to minoritised groups with care and support needs.
Areas of research interest and expertise: housing, ageing and social inclusion; unpaid carers and social isolation; loneliness, ageing and later life; older men’s social connections; sexuality, gender identity and ageing; LGBTQ+ ageing; social work with older people; inclusive social care practices and services.
Jeremy Dixon
Jeremy Dixon is a Reader in the Centre for Adult Social Care. Prior to joining Cardiff University, he worked at the University of Bath as a lecturer, senior lecturer and then reader in social work between 2012-2024. Before this, he was employed as a senior lecturer in social work at the University of the West of England from 2009-2012. His research interests include:
- How professionals understand and manage risk and uncertainty
- Adult safeguarding
- How professionals interpret mental health law
- The views of people living with mental health problems and unpaid carers on mental health law and mental health services
- Dementia care
- End of life care
Jeremy qualified as a social worker in 1998 working in a wide variety of mental health teams. During his period as a social worker, he was also employed as an Approved Mental Health Professional and as a senior practitioner in a forensic mental health unit.
Alex Williams
As the CARE Centre Manager, Alex provides strategic oversight, manages operational delivery, and leads the CARE Professional Services team.
Alex has over 16 years of experience of supporting and managing externally funded programmes, research networks and research centres at Cardiff University. This experience has included working collaboratively across universities and working with a number of different funders including the EU, WG and UKRI.
Before Cardiff University, Alex worked in financial services regulation, specialising in developing and advising on Training and Competence rules and implementation across the regulated financial services sector. She also has worked in the accountancy, engineering and investment management regulatory sectors, developing and delivering graduate and professional development programmes.
Jonathan has worked at the University as a social work academic since 1996. Most of his research has been about children’s social care for the last ten years or so, but over his career he has also followed up wider interests in such areas as social work education, social work research, and suicide prevention. He also has a long-term interest in working with men. He is a registered social worker and although it is many years since he worked in practice, he does voluntary work, helping to facilitate a weekly men’s group in a mental health charity.
From 2018 to 2021 Professor Scourfield was seconded part-time to the Welsh Government as specialist policy advisor for social services, covering adult social care as well as children’s for most of the period. He is methodologically pluralist, having started academic life as a qualitative and sociologically-informed researcher and then moved to more quantitative and evaluative research in recent years, after training in epidemiology.
Sarah is a sociologist of work and organizations at Cardiff Business School. Her work focuses on detailed qualitative studies to examine working realities across a range of organizational contexts and occupational groups including in adult social care.
Sarah’s research interests include:
Social care employment
- Skills and social care – this work links to debates about recognizing and valuing skills in social care and specifically focuses on emotion management and skills. This approach aims to better appreciate diversity in skills across service settings and user groups and the role gender plays in skill determinations.
- Work meanings – research interest centres on debates about dirty work and stigma in social care and questions work meanings in this context. Specifically, how work meanings are informed by wider social values which also influences occupational communities and identities in social care.
Social care organizations
This research centres on the potential for new organizational models in ASC specifically in relation to care cooperatives to assess whether they can improve employee outcomes. This examination also links to discussions about the market provision of adult social care and recent debates regarding market shaping including the Welsh Government’s aim of promoting cooperatives to rebalance the market in ASC.
Mike is Director of the Division of Population Health & Social Care at the Centre for Trials Research. He is a psychologist, trialist and mixed methodologist with expertise in the development and evaluation of complex interventions in primary and secondary medical care, community and social care settings. Professor Robling led the recent OSCAR study which assessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health of domiciliary care workers in Wales and is currently co- investigator on a study of workforce registration in the residential childcare workforce.
He is a research partner with both CASCADE and DECIPHer Centres (Cardiff University). He is a member of the Health and Care Research Wales funding panel for Social Care Research and deputy chair of the NIHR Policy Research Programme’s funding panel. Professor Robling has substantive experience of successfully leading large multi-site complex evaluations. In the Centre for Trials Research, Professor Robling is the lead for Public Involvement and Engagement, for maximizing the use of administrative data as a research resource and Directorial lead for the Qualitative methods and Data Management teams. He is currently the Cardiff lead for HDR UK’s new 5-year workstream on transforming healthcare systems data for use in trials.
CARE Community
Sofia holds a British Academy Innovation Fellowship exploring the policy links of creative social prescribing for older people experiencing dementia and social isolation. Dr Vougiokalou researched the processes of embedding innovation through creativity in health and social care settings as part of the Health Arts Research People (HARP) programme.
Sofia is an associate editor at the Arts & Health journal, co-convenor of the Migration, Ethinicity and Diversity (MEAD) research group and sits on the leadership team of the Wellbeing Research Network of the Wales Institute for Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD). She is also a member of the Health and Care Research Wales Equality Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group and the All Wales Deaf Mental Health and Wellbeing working group. In 2021,
Dr Vougiokalou is a qualitative health services researcher with a background in medical anthropology, user-centred design and evaluation. She has experience of co-production in healthcare settings using Experience-Based Co-Design, Appreciative Inquiry, Participatory Action Research and Participatory Rural Appraisal. Past research has contributed to the evaluation and foundational understanding of the integration of lay and experiential knowledge into health service improvement for long-term conditions such as cancer and dementia.
Sophie is a research associate in the Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre (CASCADE), Cardiff University. Sophie is a mixed-methods researcher with expertise in administrative data linkage research, Realist approaches, and survey design and analysis. I have experience researching mental health and children’s social care systems.
Sophie is interested in developing research in several areas:
- Transitions from children’s social services to adult social services.
- Inter-agency working between adult health and social care and children’s social care, particularly around substance misuse, mental health, and domestic abuse.
- Using administrative data linkage in adult social care research.
Melissa is a mixed-methods Research Associate in the Centre for Adult Social Care Research (CARE) with a background in social care, psychology and neuroscience.
Richard is a research assistant at the Centre for Adult Social Care Research (CARE), with knowledge of masculinities related research and qualitative research methods.
Alexis is a research associate in public services and social innovation. She supports public services to think and do differently. She does this through active collaboration and applied research that combines the best of social science (deep insights into people and place) with practical, actionable insights in order to catalyse real change. Co-production and participatory techniques are the common thread through all of her projects. To do with people, not to them — she uses design methods and approaches. She has experience working across public services, but for the past three years, has focused on health and social care.
In 2020-21 she co designed, developed, and supported Barts Shield a multi-functional peer-support network that mobilized NHS staff who were clinically vulnerable and having to ‘shield’ during the Covid-19 pandemic. 2022-23 she has been supporting Social Care Wales by doing research into sector needs for innovation in social care and now, she’s co-leading the development of the next social care research, innovation and improvement strategy for Wales. She is proficient with Liberating Structures and an active member of the design and service design communities. She also supports and advises on Human Learning Systems related projects which focus on embracing complexity in public service design and practice.
Alison is a Lecturer in the Law School. Her broad areas of research are social care law and policy in Wales and England and the human rights of disabled people including those enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Alison has a particular interest in the concept of independent living as it is understood in the global disabled people’s movement – ie: the right of all disabled people to live their lives with opportunities and self-determination equal to others and to have access to support to enable this.
She places a strong focus on how law and policy shape and frame identities and the role of language in this process. I have developing research interests in the regulatory context, co- production, the creation of National Care Services in Scotland/Wales, and the role of social enterprises in delivering social care. Dr Tarrant is a member of the Welsh Government’s Task Force on the Rights of Disabled People, a former solicitor and has previously worked in policy and campaigns roles in charities.
Alyson is a Professor in Social Work, an Assistant Director of CASCADE and responsible for ExChange, the research dissemination arm of the Centre. ExChange covers both children’s and adult social care and CARE’s communications and events officer will work on the adult side. Alyson teaches on the MA in Social Work and is a registered Social Worker with Social Care Wales.
Professor Rees’ research centres on social justice and gender taking a whole-family, strengths based and sociological perspective with specific areas of research in fostering, adoption, child neglect, family social work as well as criminal justice, domestic abuse, women in prison, and adult safeguarding.
Anna is a lecturer in Management, Employment and Organisations at Cardiff Business School. Her research interests oscillate around an idea that in an ageing society, communities must cultivate their social fabric to maintain health and well-being. Looking at social innovation in community care, she studies how Lindsay Leg Clubs, partnerships between people with leg problems, community volunteers and nurses, generate social value.
In her Mölnlycke Health Care-funded service evaluation of UK Leg Clubs Anna demonstrated that creating a sense of community, fostering collective learning, safeguarding health and offering older volunteers spaces for continued societal functioning are meaningful generators of social health. Dr Galazka has disseminated her findings at public university lectures conferences and through podcasts during the Global Public Health Weeks and via Health Shared. She lectures on the MSc Wound Healing and Tissue Repair at Cardiff University School of Medicine. Currently, Anna is developing a responsible innovation perspective on Leg Club volunteering through Cardiff Business School funded research. Being the first to put Leg Clubs on the social science research agenda, she aspires to become an interdisciplinary, translational researcher who solidifies the value of qualitative evidence in policy evaluation.
Ben is Professor of Mental Health Nursing in the School of Healthcare Sciences at Cardiff University. He is also serving a term as the School’s Director of Postgraduate Research. As a health and social care researcher Ben is interested in mental health systems, including the interrelationships between policy, the organisation and delivery of care, and the experiences of people both using and working in services.
Most of the funding for this research has come from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR) Programme and from Health and Care Research Wales.
Recent and ongoing examples of projects Professor Hannigan has led or collaborated on include work into mental health care planning and coordination in both community and hospital settings, end of life care for people with severe mental illnesses, and crisis care for children and young people
Catherine is a Psychologist and Reader in the School of Healthcare Sciences. She has been conducting research in the field of neurodiversity for 15 years and now holds positions on neurodiversity committees nationally and internationally, including for example, the Welsh Government Neurodiversity Clinical Advisory Group and vice Chair of the International Society of Research and Advocacy for Developmental Coordination Disorder (ISRA-DCD).
Catherine has also been invited to the mental health, participation and quality of life working group for the next revision of International Clinical Practice Recommendations for DCD due to be published in 2025. Dr Purcell’s research interests include optimal service delivery models for neurodiverse children and adults, the impact of neurodiversity on everyday living, models of inclusive design and understanding access requirements to community and employment opportunities for the neurodiverse population. Catherine has come from an experimental background but has moved towards co-production and methodologies such as realist evaluation over time. Catherine is currently leading a multi-University study exploring barriers and opportunities for active travel in Wales using a model of behaviour change.
Dan is a senior lecturer in social work in the School of Social Sciences, having previously worked as a social worker in the Children’s Hospital for Wales, where he supported the families of children going through treatment for cancer. He is a qualitative researcher with a particular interest in ethnographic approaches. Previous work includes an ethnographic study of a hospital social work team, which formed the basis of his book, Critical Hospital Social Work Practice, and an interview-based study of the experiences of unpaid carers during the COVID-19 pandemic, funded by Public Health Wales.
Dr Burrows has an ongoing interest in researching unpaid caring, with an emphasis on understanding and developing social work practice to support carers. He is keen to promote the voices of social workers and other social care practitioners in research as well as those of people who use services, with an approach informed by principles of rights- based practice. Dan also maintains an interest in inter-professional work, in particular the interface between health services and social care
Davina is a sociologist and nurse academic with research interests in nursing, the caring division of labour, health and social care work organisation, and service improvement. She has expertise in ethnographic research methods and the use of sociological theories in developing practice insights and advancing the science of improvement in health and social care. Davina has a particular interest in the socio-technical distribution of activity, and the impact of new technologies on systems of work.
Professor Allen’s research includes foundational ethnographic studies of organisational phenomena, a long-standing programme of research on nursing work, and large-scale applied research projects. Her current studies include an (a) exploration of the use of professional judgement in nurse staffing systems in England and Wales and (b) development of TRACT a digital application to measure, plan and manage the organisational components of nursing work. Professor Allen is in the process of analysing a large ethnographic study of the organisation of transition across the hip fracture trajectory, which includes hospital discharge planning and management of the health and social care interface.
Gareth is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. He is a sociologist interested in disability, medicine, health/illness, reproduction, and stigma.
His latest project – funded by the British Academy as part of its Mid- Career Fellowship scheme – explores how learning-disabled people craft alternative and affirmative accounts of their lives, which depart from popular (and problematic) narratives of deficit, tragedy, and dependence.
Dr Thomas has also recently undertaken a study on older people’s experiences of walking football.
Georgie is a HCRW Social Care Research Fellow and Lecturer in the School of Psychology. She is interested in the use of technologies (particularly smart tech) in health and social care settings. Some current research projects include the use of smart speakers and smart homes by people with a learning disability and older people living in social housing.
Dr Powell is exploring whether this technology could empower people to live more independently, and improve wellbeing, loneliness and digital inclusion. Georgie is collaborating with social care organisations in Wales with an interest in digital innovation on these projects. In a side project, she found that smart speakers could help people with a speech impairment to improve their speech intelligibility. In collaboration with colleagues in computer science, she has been developing more inclusive approaches to help people understand and change privacy settings on smart devices.
James is a professor in the School of Social Sciences, and a statistician and epidemiologist by training. His research is focused mainly on better understanding public health challenges and designing and evaluating relevant interventions.
From March 2018 to September 2023 he was the director of Cardiff University’s Y Lab – the Public Services Innovation Lab for Wales. Y Lab supported and promoted experimentation and innovation in public services in Wales, and conducted research on the hows and whys of public services innovation.
Prior to this, James worked as a statistician and epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine for 12 years. His research focused on pragmatic evaluations of health system interventions across a range of disease areas and geographies, mainly using cluster randomised and stepped-wedge trials.
Josie is a lecturer in Cardiff social sciences, specialising in social psychology and a health researcher, with a background in health and social care and policy roles. Dr Henley’s current research explores the experiences of Autistic people and of informal family carers of people with dementia.
Josie is interested in the role that diagnosis plays in the lives of people with stigmatised conditions, especially those that sit on the cusp between ‘mental health’ and ‘physical health’ such as dementia, autism and ADHD. They are keen to collaborate with scholars and stakeholders on interdisciplinary projects that explore the psychological and social impact of these conditions, particularly in the diagnostic period.
Julie is a Lecturer and Postdoctoral Fellow, funded by Health and Care Research Wales in the School of Healthcare Sciences. Her current study ‘FEAST’ explores the role of food and feeding in long-term neurological care settings.
A physiotherapist by background Julie held multiple clinical and managerial roles in the NHS and Independent sector, managing multidisciplinary teams in neurological rehabilitation, long-term care and general and old age medicine before embarking on a research career. Dr Latchem-Hastings’ research and engagement focuses largely on under researched communities/populations – including people with a prolonged disorder of consciousness (see www.cdoc.org.uk), younger adults (18-65) with neurological conditions living in long-term care and adults with hip dysplasia. Julie enjoys working with creative artists and using creative methods to engage with patients and the public in her research. The use of creative methods has been central to her recent ISSF Public Engagement project ‘Get CreActive’ – aimed at supporting young adults with hips dysplasia to develop a peer support website about physical activity – see www.hipdysplasialife.org
Martin FCIPD FLSW FAcSS is professor of management at Cardiff Business School in the UK. His current research analyses co-production in health and social care, and the development of purpose-driven organisations.
Martin recently collaborated on the EU Horizon 20/20 COGOV study of co-produced public services in eight countries. He previously led externally-funded studies of settings including hospitals, residential children’s care, and mental health.
Between 1999 and 2007, Professor Kitchener worked at the University of California (Berkeley and San Francisco) where he studied processes of institutional change in social care. The outputs of his research are published widely and have had considerable impact on practice and policy. Between 2012 and 2018, Martin served as Dean of Cardiff Business School and launched its distinctive Public Value Strategy.
Peter is a Professor in the School of Geography and Planning, where the primary focus of his research and advisory work is homelessness prevention. His research has had considerable impact, including on the development of prevention- focused legislation and practice in multiple countries.
Most recently Professor Mackie has sought to advance international homelessness prevention efforts through the European Commission’s Platform on Combatting Homelessness. Currently he is a founding Editor for the International Journal on Homelessness, a member of the Crisis homelessness legislation expert review panel in Wales, and Chair of Llamau.
Rachel is the Director of Brain Health & Mental Wellbeing Division, CTR. she is a Chartered Psychologist and trials methodologist, experienced in the development and evaluation of interventions as applied to neurodevelopment and/or mental health.
Dr McNamara is particularly interested in the overlap between these areas e.g., higher rates of poor mental health in those with neurodevelopmental conditions such as intellectual disability or autism, and the promotion of increased wellbeing in this group, including behaviour support interventions. This work includes children, adults and carers across health, education and social care settings with a range of collaborators (in the UK and internationally) including third sector partners.
Rebecca is an early career researcher and lecturer who recently joined Cardiff University. She has experience in statutory and voluntary social work with older adults, specialising in working with people and families affected by dementia.
Dr Oatley’s research interests focus on the lived experience of dementia and understanding ways in which post-diagnostic interventions (e.g. reminiscence, leisure, housing) can support people’s citizenship, personhood, and challenge dementia/ageing-related stigma. Rebecca has an overarching interest in gendered ageing and the gendered lived experience of dementia.
Dr Oatley’s research experience includes projects for the NIHR, Big Lottery and Active H&W (Sport England). Methods experience includes ethnography, qualitative interviewing, surveys, focus group facilitation, soft systems methodology, and working with adults who lack capacity to consent to participate in research. Rebecca is experienced in co-producing research findings, and co-writing dissemination content with people living with dementia.
Roser is a sociologist with research focused on the topics of social connectedness and technologies, later life, the digital ageing body and care in the networked society. Dr Beneito-Montagut makes use of a range of digital, creative and mixed research methods including online ethnographies and is interested in everyday life relations, emotions and affects.
Publications have included socio-cultural and material dimensions of “being” and interacting online; emotions and about digital later life and ageing as well as methodological innovations in relation to the availability of digital data.
Summary of research areas;
- Relationships and affects online
- Older people and technology
- Mediated care practices
- Digital sociology and digital social research
Sally is Professor of Social Work in SOCSI where she is Director of Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion and a member of the senior management team. Sally leads on public involvement in CASCADE. Between 2015 and 2022 she was also Children’s Commissioner for Wales.
Professor Holland will lead on public involvement in CARE, and plans to build on the experience built up in CASCADE to do so. This is based on the UK standards for public involvement.
Sally is currently co-PI on a Welsh Government-commissioned evaluation of the Basic Income Pilot for care leavers. Her relevant research interests for CARE are transitions from child to adult services. Sally is also a fairly fluent Welsh learner.
Stephen Beyer is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Medicine, and Honorary Lead in Learning Disability Employment at the National Centre for Mental Health, Cardiff University. He has published widely on supported employment and transition from school to adult life for people with Learning Disabilities.
Dr Beyer has carried out national research studies for UK Government Departments on the job coach model of supported employment and employment of disabled people and has worked on a number of European projects also. He has helped develop a number of job coach training resources targeting the inclusion of people with learning disabilities in work. He has jointly authored resources for employers including Good for Business with Mencap. He is currently evaluating the Engage to Change Project, a National Lottery Community Fund project in partnership with Welsh Government to deliver paid jobs to young people with a Learning Disability or Autistic young people in Wales.
Victoria is a Senior Research Fellow and registered nurse based at the Centre for Trials Research where she leads a research programme exploring the inclusion of under-served populations in research. She has a particular interest in the ethical and methodological issues surrounding research involving adults with impaired capacity to consent, including people living with dementia.
Dr Shepherd’s work includes exploring barriers to the inclusion of these populations and developing interventions to address them, including the NIHR INCLUDE Impaired Capacity to Consent framework. Her work has included exploring decision-making about research participation on behalf of adults who lack capacity to consent, the development of a decision support intervention for family members acting as consultees and legal representatives which is being evaluated in a range of trials and settings including in care homes, and the development of an online resource on capacity and consent in research. She also has a portfolio of national and international care home research, including clinical trials, research priority setting studies, and the development of core outcome sets. She currently supervises a HCRW Social Care PhD Studentship project exploring the barriers to care home residents participating in research and chairs the all-Wales ENRICH Cymru Advisory Group.
Dr Dorottya Cserzo is a Research Associate at the Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre (CASCADE). She is currently working on a project evaluating the service outcomes for criminally exploited children funded by Health and Care Research Wales. The project aims to create detailed case studies of criminally exploited young people’s lived experiences of service pathways, provision and outcomes five years prior to referral acceptance and up to 2 years after.
Dr Cserzo specialises in qualitative analysis (multimodal discourse analysis, focus group and interview methods). Previously she has been involved in projects on medical education and digital communication. She contributes to teaching in the School of Social Sciences through guest lectures, workshops, and supervision.
Fiona is the Deputy Director for Data at the Centre for Trials Research and a senior trials methodologist with expertise in the design and conduct of large, often complex multi-disciplinary trials and studies that use routinely collected data (routine data) and/or linked data to deliver policy-relevant population health research.
Yvonne’s expertise lies in developing and evaluating complex public health and mental health interventions, particularly those aimed at vulnerable and marginalised groups. She joined CTR (Centre for Trials Research), formally SEWTU (South East Wales Trials Unit), in July 2013. During my time here she has supported and led the delivery of a number of studies and trials.
Before joining CTR Yvonne was based in the Public Health team at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol and worked on the Musical Pathways study which was evaluating the health, well-being and social inclusion of young offenders involved in a music intervention.
Her research interests include:
- Qualitative research methods
- Process evaluation methods
- Mental Health
- Health inequalities
- Vulnerable groups
- Self-harm
- Prison health
- Young offenders
- Behaviour change
- Complex health interventions
- Arts & Health
Asma is a Research Associate in British Muslim Studies at Cardiff University’s Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK.
She is a mixed methods (QUANT-QUAL) researcher. Her research interests include labour market inequalities, migration, and mental health.
She enjoys working on co-produced projects with third sector organisations to conduct research that helps people to live healthy, happy and productive lives.
Elisa is a Research Associate at the National Centre for Mental Health, School of Medicine. Her research interests cover learning disabilities, neurodiversity, supported employment, transition from education to adulthood and health inequalities.
Elisa is currently working on the legacy and long-term impact of the Engage to Change project, promoting paid employment opportunities for young people aged 16-25 with learning disabilities, learning difficulties and/or autism.
With extensive experience in researching supported employment for people with learning disabilities and autism, Elisa is passionate about influencing current policy and making long lasting changes for the stakeholders involved.
Elisa developed a passion in co-producing research with people with learning disability and autism, and in generating accessible or easy read material, to ensure journal papers, scientific presentations and reports are adapted to be accessible to everyone.
Andrea is a sociologist interested in learning disabilities, autism and additional learning needs (ALN), particularly in the field of transition from education to employment and supported employment. She has over 30 years of experience working with people with a learning disability, both in research and social care settings. Previous research work focused on the transition of people from long stay institutions to community settings, epilepsy, assistive technology, and supported living.
Andrea’s current work is an evaluation of the Engage to Change project, a 7 year partnership programme which supported over 1000 young people aged 16 to 25 with learning disabilities in Wales to raise employment related skills and transition into paid work through job coaching, supported internships and supported apprenticeships. She is presently working on influencing and informing with project stakeholders including young people with a learning disability, families and carers, employers, colleges of further education and Welsh Government using key findings from the project. Andrea also supports Cardiff Universities Supported Internship scheme and mentors young people with learning disabilities and autistic young people undertaking internship placements within the National Centre for Mental Health. Andrea has a strong interest in public involvement and co-production, including impact through accessible and easy read research outputs.