Staff Profile

I am a research assistant within NIHR Innovation Observatory, where I specialise in methodologies to capture public insight and identify areas of unmet health and care need. My research spans across all age groups, but with particular focus on children, young people, and their everyday experiences. Through understanding these experiences effectively, we can discover where health and research innovation is needed. I’m also an advocate for interdisciplinary research, and spend a lot of my time working out effective ways to communicate and collaborate across disciplines and industries.

I collaborate closely with community groups and partners to better understand their priorities and challenges. Some days, I’m in the office analysing data or designing research methods, while others find me hosting public workshops, or engaging directly with children and families in the community! I like to use innovative, creative or co-designed approaches to uncover what truly matters to the public.

I have also completed an NIHR Pre-Doctoral Fellowship Award, in the methodology stream, hosted by Newcastle University's Population Health Sciences Institute. This has provided me with comprehensive training and experiences, and conducted a mixed methods study evaluating the acceptability and feasibility of wearable technologies in children aged 0-36 months

Previous work with Newcastle University has included working on the 'ActiveCHILD' study, investigating physical activity and movement in young children under 5 years and their families, as well as 'KERNEL' research group, a group committed to interdisciplinary, co-produced and creative methods to understand child - and therefore life-course - health.

My first degree was in Anthropology (Social, Biological and Evolutionary), and I chose to advance this with an MSc in Medical Anthropology. Previously, my research skills have been predominantly within qualitative research and ethnography, implementing in-depth and interpersonal methods, based on the premise that our perspectives, behaviours and actions are impacted by our cultural and social environments.

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• Article

  • Thornton C, Lanyi K, Wilkins G, Potter R, Hunter E, Kolehmainen N, Pearson F. Scoping the Priorities and Concerns of Parents: An Infodemiology Study of Posts on Mumsnet and Reddit. Journal of Medical Internet Research 2023, 25, e47849.