Who We Are
Meet the Team
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Research Fellow
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Syka holds the position of Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of Bradford and is a research fellow at the Rapid Research and Appraisal lab at UCL. Before joining the University of Bradford, her career included roles as a lecturer at Birkbeck University and Manchester Metropolitan University. She is a passionate advocate for mental health equality. Her academic interests encompass a wide range of areas, including cultural adaptations of psychological interventions, health inequalities, mental health prevention and public and patient engagement in research. As a qualitative researcher, she has developed expertise in rapid qualitative research methods and collaborates with leading experts at UCL in developing and refining this innovative methodology.
Dr Iqbal iscurrently funded for impactful research projects including the NIHR Mental Health Leaders Award which is focussed on Integrated Strategies for Preventing Inequalities and Reducing Early life risk factors for Mental Health challenges (INSPIRE), NIHR project on Public acceptance of the use of administrative datasets for public Health Research, MRC project on Digital Animation in Service Improvement (DAISI) project and Examining Cultural Adaptations for Family Interventions with People experiencing Psychosis.
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PPIE Lead and
Research Fellow -
Katie has completed a BSc in Psychology and Youth Studies at Teesside University and an MSc in Health Psychology at UCL. Katie’s research interests are driven from having had major surgery herself and include service evaluation of perioperative pathways, patient experiences of undergoing surgery and patient and public involvement in research.
Katie will begin a PhD, at UCL, in 2025 looking at perioperative interventions to improve surgical outcomes for patients from low-income backgrounds.
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Research Assitant
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Gráinne has a BSc in Psychology from Northumbria University and has recently completed an MSc in Clinical Mental Health Sciences at UCL.
Her interests include health inequalities, inequities and access to care for both physical and mental health conditions. She has previously volunteered for a North East charity to improve social outcomes in older adults and held an Honorary Research Assistant role with the NIHR Mental Health Policy Research Unit throughout her MSc.
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Research Fellow
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Emma is an experienced qualitative health researcher whose work has focused on children and other vulnerable groups. She spent 11 years at the Louis Dundas Centre for children’s Palliative Care at UCL conducting a number of projects including a Cochrane review on the pharmacological interventions for pain in children and adolescents with life-limiting conditions, an interview study exploring advanced care planning in children with life-limiting conditions, and a part-time PhD exploring quality of life in children with high-risk brain tumours.
She joined the Rapid Research Evaluation and Appraisal Lab (RREAL) in May of 2023 and has worked on the NAP 7 project exploring a Big Qualitative and sentiment analysis of free-text responses to survey data focused on anaesthetist's experience of perioperative cardiac arrest. She will apply the learning from this to a Big Qualitative analysis of patient safety data within the PSRC project.
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Senior Research Fellow
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Paulina is a multidisciplinary Research Fellow who combines Behaviour Science, Qualitative Research, and Data Science. She focuses her work on social inequalities and algorithmic bias in health.
Her background is in behavioural science and health psychology, focusing on digital health. Her work spans academics, digital health companies for the public good, and governmental institutions. Previously, she worked as a Research Associate at University College London, investigating how to improve evaluation in digital health technology. She also served as a Lecturer in Health Psychology at the University of Westminster. She was an Academic Adviser developing a resource for GOV.UK, Evaluating digital health products. Additionally, she served as a Principal Behavioural Insights Advisor at Public Health England and the Department of Health and Social Care, where she applied behavioural science tools to public health issues.
With support from a Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship, Dr Bondaronek is now leading the development of the HUMBLE framework. The HUMBLE project brings together natural language processing, qualitative analysis, and behavioural science to analyse large free-text datasets. Focusing on socio-demographic factors involved in social inequalities, the HUMBLE project examines the experiences of underserved communities. The overarching principle of HUMBLE is to detect and mitigate algorithmic bias through human-technology collaboration.
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PhD Student
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Rita is a PhD student at RREAL, she has a Bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Leeds, and a Master's degree in Global Health from King's College London. Her core competencies include communication, problem-solving, and leadership.
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Director
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Prof. Cecilia Vindrola is an anthropologist interested in applied health research and the development of rapid approaches to research. She is the Director of the Rapid Research Evaluation and Appraisal Lab (RREAL). She is currently PI for two MRC-UKRI funded studies on the development of rapid research approaches (STREAM and LISTEN). She is a theme lead for the NIHR Central London Patient Safety Research Collaboration, focusing on safer healthcare organisations.
She also leads three national qualitative process evaluations funded by NIHR (AIR SAFETY, POPSUP and E-PERISCOPE). Prof Vindrola is responsible for the delivery of qualitative studies within trials (SWATs) for the VITAL, ACCESS, WAFER, MULTI-MIBI and LAP-PIE trials (all funded by NIHR). Prof Vindrola also leads on an average of ten consultancies per year, working with organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP), NHS England and Improvement (NHSE/I), Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), International Committee for the Red Cross, Genomics England and CAPE. She has written extensively on the use of rapid qualitative research and works as a Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Targeted Intervention, UCL.
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Research Associate
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Sigrún has been working as a researcher for RREAL since 2021, after she gained an MSc in Population Health at UCL.
Over this time, she has gained experience in practicing predominantly qualitative research skills, across many health and social related areas including: the response and recovery to COVID-19; the rapid evaluation and appraisal of health services; the evaluation of clinical trials; mapping of pathways to diagnosis; and research into domestic abuse, and violence against women and girls.
Based on her experience of applying rapid approaches to research and evaluation, Sigrún has been working with RREAL to develop resources and approaches to contribute to the rapid field of evaluation and research. This has included developing Standards for Rapid Evaluation and Appraisal Methods (STREAM) and refining the method for the Collaborative and Digital Analysis of Big Qual Data in Time Sensitive Contexts (LISTEN).
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Research Assistant
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Noémie is an anthropologist interested in experimental care, the use of emerging technologies in health care, and patient/health care providers relationships. She previously received a MSc in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, and an MSc in linguistics from the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University. She spent several years teaching in France, Switzerland, Australia, and Hong Kong.
She is a research assistant on the John Fell-funded project “Vaccine Hesitancy and online misinformation consumption and distribution among frontline healthcare workers”.
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Co-Founder
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Ginger A. Johnson is a Medical Anthropologist who has conducted public health research in East, West, Central and Southern Africa, North and Southeast Asia, and in the Middle East and North Africa on behalf of the World Food Programme (WFP), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Population Services International (PSI), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM), and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). She was embedded in West Africa with the IFRC during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak and has additionally been involved in conducting research on subsequent public health emergencies of international concern such as Zika in Latin America, Ebola in DRC, polio in Pakistan and the COVID-19 pandemic. Ginger founded RREAL with Prof Cecilia Vindrola-Padros.
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Samantha is an Associate Professor and Career Development Fellow in health sociology at the Pandemic Sciences Institute, University of Oxford, leading the Vaccines and Society Unit (VAS). Her work centres around health, society, and policy topics.
She draws on perspectives from sociology, anthropology, history, global health, and science and technology studies (STS).
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Patrick is based in the Primary Care and Public Health Department at BSMS. He completed his undergraduate Psychology (BSc Hons) degree at University of West London (UWL). Patrick continued to complete his Master’s in Health Psychology at UWL. Patrick currently works with several NHS Trusts, universities, organisations and researchers around mental health, wellbeing, improving access and challenging inequalities.
Patrick’s current PhD research is focused on migrant populations and mental health, mainly co-producing with female migrants mental health interventions, awareness, and policy change. Primarily focused on Kent, Surrey and Sussex, Patrick hopes to expand the research nationally and internationally. He is being supervised by Professor Carrie Llewellyn, Dr Marija Pantelic, Dr Priya Paudyal and Dr Chrissie Jones.
Patrick has guest lectured on the MSc Core Principles of Mental Health Research at University College London and undertakes lectures at BSMS. For the University of Surrey, Patrick lectures on systematic reviews – synthesising qualitative studies, as part of the Research Methods unit. For the Critical and Social Issues unit for the PsychD Clinical Psychology trainees, Patrick teaches about mental health support for female migrants: challenges, opportunities, and research issues.
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David is a Senior Research Fellow, Health Economist & Academic Psychiatrist, with a background in mental health and health economics. He completed a speciality training in adult psychiatry in Santiago, Chile and a PhD in Health Economics at King's College London, UK.
His research interests are developing ways to improve the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and equity of interventions for people with mental illness in low- and middle-income countries. He uses advanced research synthesis methods and decision-analytical techniques such as economic modelling and microsimulation as research tools.
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Petra is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Global Mental Health, Department of Population Health.
She joined LSHTM in August 2024. Before this, Petra held positions at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London, London School of Economics and Political Science, Imperial College London, and Columbia University. She currently holds affiliate positions at King's College London and University College London.
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Elaine is a Research Fellow at the Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health. She has been an external collaborator of RREAL since 2021. Her research focuses on the intersections of mental health, climate change, and resilience-building strategies, especially in Latin American communities.
Dr. Flores is a co-Principal Investigator on the Environment x Women's Health (ExWH) project examining connections between environmental exposures and women's health outcomes. She is a co-founder of PLASMA, the Social Research Platform on Mental Health in Latin America, and a member of the Centre for Global Mental Health, a collaboration between LSHTM and King’s College London.
Dr. Flores holds a Medical Degree, a Master of Science in Epidemiology Research, and a PhD in Public Health and Epidemiology. She remains actively engaged with the research community in Peru as an affiliate of Emerge and Clima, research groups examining emerging infectious diseases and climate change impacts on public health.
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Phoebe has research interests in the integration of psychological interventions into real-world settings as well as research to directly inform policy. Phoebe has expertise in systematic review methodology, and mixed methods approaches to answering complex research questions to inform implementation.
Currrently, Phoebe has primary interests into development and expansion of student mental health services at UCL and nationwide, and how social influences contribute to mental wellbeing.
Collaborators
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Sam is a Digital Sociologist and Social Data Scientist with over a decade of experience in leveraging digital methods to analyse Big Social Data in the fields of digital epidemiology and digital global and public health. She also runs the BigQualData project. As a Senior Research Fellow RREAL, she leads the Big Qualitative Data workstream, focusing on rapid qualitative research into pressing public health issues like vaccine hesitancy, long COVID, and misinformation.
She is research consultant and digital analytics lead at the Ethox Centre, based in the Big Data Institute at Oxford University, as well as the Oxford Vaccine Group - where she works with an international team of academics on Vaccine Hesitancy amongst healthcare workers, the world of Digital Misinformation, Disinformation and Revelatory Fakes.
She utilises Big Qual methods and Generative AI to conduct rapid qualitative research into the mental health of Healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, UK Public Healthcare delivery and Patient Safety, and investigate the impact of complex health emergencies. Previously, she worked as the Digital Analytics Lead at the Vaccine Confidence Project (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine), where she used machine learning and sentiment analysis to research the nuances of sentiment in vaccine confidence discourse across the global diaspora. Her work has been published in academic journals and featured at international conferences for the WHO and UNICEF, as well as on the BBC documentary "Conspiracy Files: Vaccine Wars."
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Research Assistant
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Abinaya is a Research Assistant at RREAL and concurrently completing her PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Abinaya’s PhD thesis is a realist exploration of mHealth interventions implemented in LMICs and their impact on postpartum family planning knowledge. Her research interests include digital health, family planning, and big qualitative data analysis.
Through her role at RREAL, Abinaya has gained expertise in conducting social media discourse analysis using a range of digital tools such as Pulsar, InfraNodus, and Brandwatch. Also, she has contributed to screening, data extraction, and analysis for large-scale systematic reviews and is leading the evaluation of the implementation of a novel big qualitative data analysis method (LISTEN).
Abinaya has led dissemination efforts on behalf of the LISTEN project, having presented at the Qualitative Health Research Network Conference in February 2024 and proposing a workshop to take place at the Health Services Research UK Conference in July 2024.
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Senior Research Fellow
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Norha has a mixed academic background in political science, clinical and experimental psychology, and population research. She completed her PhD in Social Epidemiology at the IoPPN, with Dr Vanessa Lawrence as her first supervisor. For her PhD project she engaged in collaborations with the University of Chile, the Federal University of Sao Paulo, and the RedeAmericas International Research Project.
She currently works as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the NIHR Mental Health Policy Research Unit, a commission of the Department of Health that informs mental health service and policy development. She is a co-founder of the Social Research Platform on Mental Health in Latin America (PLASMA), and lead of the Recovery Chapter of the Latin American Consortium for Early Psychosis Research (ANDES). Norha is also a consultant for the projects User-Led Research in Mental Health: history, impact and current configurations (EURIKHA); London Transformation and Learning Collaborative - Critical Care programme (LTLC); and Modelling of public health interventions for the COVID-19 outbreak in Colombia (La Salle University).
Her work focuses on applying participatory research methods that promote stakeholder involvement; it challenges the traditional focus on clinical views and rather advocates for co-construction of knowledge to promote the sustainable development of health services. She is interested in innovative research methods that allow for collaborative data collection and analysis of large qualitative datasets in a timely manner. This includes qualitative methods such as rapid appraisal, framework analysis, and combining thematic analysis with health informatics methods like natural language processing.
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Research Assistant
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Ailey is an MSc graduate in Political Science and Anthropology, with a passion for social justice who aspires to create a meaningful difference in the community, specifically in the area of women's health and rights. She works with RREAL as a public health researcher at UCL, conducting rapid research to study and evaluate clinical and health service models and interventions.
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Qualitative Researcher
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Laura is a confident and driven researcher and evaluator with experience in UK, China and Bosnia Herzegovina, Laura is fluent in French, English and Italian, is self-motivated, seeks tasks through and is passionate about inclusiveness. Laura has worked across the Third Sector and the Academia, bringing together skills developed across the fields.
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Research Assitant
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Laura is an epidemiologist with experience in research on mental health, older adults, and migrants; conducting data source mapping; database analysis; and Stata handling.
In 2020, she had the opportunity to participate in the LASER-PULSE HACKATON competition with the work "Migration: Should I Stay, or Should I Go?", in which her team took second place. However, her last major personal project was the creation in 2022 of the consulting firm on epidemiology and public health "EPIMAS", with two fellow epidemiologists. Laura has a particular interest in the study of mental health, especially in populations of older adults, as well as the mental health of workers and healthcare personnel. Her role at RREAL has been as a member of the EPIMAS consulting team.