About me:

Role

I am Regional Engagement Manager in the Regional Engagement Team of Exeter Innovation. I work across the disciplines, supporting opportunities for academics and students to tackle societal challenges, by engaging with regional partners such as local authorities and voluntary sector organisations.

I support the delivery of the University’s suite of Civic University Agreements (CUAs) which set out how we will work in partnership with the region’s other anchor institutions to tackle society’s most pressing problems. I am the Exeter Innovation lead for the Exeter CUA mission to “Enhance the health and wellbeing of our citizens” which aims to improve the University’s collaboration and partnership working across the region's health and wellbeing providers and agencies.

I work closely with the Engaged Research Manager to support community-based and participatory research at the University, and also oversee the Community Partnership Hub, which aims to connect public, voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector organisations with researchers and students at the University of Exeter.

I recently managed the Erasmus+ funded projects Socially Engaged Universities (SEU) and Communities and Students Together (CaST). Working in partnership with universities and their civic societies in Ghent, Delft, Magdeburg and Parma, SEU aimed to share experience and know-how of relationships between European Universities and their civic and civil societies and used this as the basis for a series of innovative pilot projects in each partner city. Meanwhile CaST aimed to advance our knowledge and understanding of what constitutes a successful and sustainable engaged learning programme. Led by the University of Exeter in partnership with the Universities of Ghent, Magdeburg, Parma, Malaga, and Turku, CaST explored existing initiatives and incorporated successful elements in a series of new community-based engaged learning programmes in each partner university.

Profile

I have more than thirty years of research experience, working within the agrochemical and medical industries in the UK and Australia, as well as the UK University and not-for-profit sector. I joined the Peninsula Medical School in 2007 as a Research Fellow in Child Health where I coordinated the NIHR-HTA funded National Collaborative Study of Lysosomal Storage Disorders (NCS-LSD) longitudinal cohort study. Meaningful engagement with patient advocate groups throughout all stages of this study was integral to the success of this project.

I later worked with a team within the Child Health Group of the University of Exeter Medical School, to co-create an intervention to prevent obesity in young people. Working with a group of young people, I created a Young Persons’ Advisory Group, comprising teenagers with an interest in health and wellbeing, who became research partners. Concurrently, I also spent three years working on the Cochrane Cardiac Rehabilitation Review Programme, writing Cochrane systematic reviews of rehabilitation interventions for patients with heart disease.