Our People

BR-UK is composed of a broad multidisciplinary team from across a range of universities and partners.

The Behavioural Research UK Leadership Hub is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [Grant Number ES/Y001044/1]. You can find out more about ESRC and their National Capability in Behavioural Research investments here.

Name	Role in BR- UK	Institution	Biography
Professor Linda Bauld	Co-Director Principal Investigator	University of Edinburgh	Linda Bauld OBE FMedSci FRSE FRCPE FAcSS FFPH is the Bruce and John Usher Chair in Public Health in the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh and Chief Social Policy Adviser to the Scottish Government. She has led a range of studies to prevent or treat the main modifiable risk factors for Non-Communicable Diseases with a particular focus on tobacco, alcohol, diet and inequalities in health. Along with serving as Co-Director of BR-UK she is Director of SPECTRUM, a research consortium that focuses on the commercial determinants of health. In her Scottish Government role, she provides Ministers with social and behavioural science advice and works on primary prevention across a range of policy areas from child poverty to population health. She is a former Scientific Adviser to the UK Department of Health, the World Health Organisation and Cancer Research UK on prevention and public health.
Professor Susan Michie	Co-Director Co-Investigator	University College London	Susan Michie, FMedSci, FAcSS, FBA is Professor of Health Psychology, Director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London, UK. (www.ucl.ac.uk/behaviour-change) and co-Director of Behavioural Research-UK. Her research focuses on human behaviour change in relation to health and the environment: how to understand it theoretically and apply theory and evidence to intervention and policy development, evaluation and implementation. Collaborations include disciplines such as information science, environmental science, computer science and medicine, covering population, organisational and individual level interventions. She leads the Human Behaviour-Change Project (www.humanbehaviourchange.org). She has published >600 journal articles and several books, including the Behaviour Change Wheel: A Guide to Designing Interventions (www.behaviourchangewheel.com). She chairs WHO’s Behavioural Insights and Sciences Technical Advisory Group, is part of the Behavioural Science Policy Research Unit advising the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care and served on the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group in Emergencies during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr Sharon Cox	Deputy Director Co-Investigator; Open Science Lead Co-Lead on Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Intersectionality	University College London	Sharon Cox is Principal Research Fellow in the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group at UCL's Department of Behavioural Science and Health. For nearly 20 years, she has been studying the psychology of addictive behaviours, specifically around tobacco, nicotine and alcohol use. Her main research interest is tobacco-related health inequalities. She has a special interest in understanding the relationships between the social determinants of health and smoking. For this, she uses observational and experimental studies to highlight inequalities in smoking and designs clinical trials and other pragmatic studies to help people quit. She leads a programme of work on smoking and health inequalities at UCL and also leads several studies which aim to reduce smoking among people experiencing homelessness.

Name

Role in BR- UK

Institution

Biography

Professor Linda Bauld

Co-Director

Principal Investigator

University of Edinburgh

Linda Bauld OBE FMedSci FRSE FRCPE FAcSS FFPH is the Bruce and John Usher Chair in Public Health in the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh and Chief Social Policy Adviser to the Scottish Government. She has led a range of studies to prevent or treat the main modifiable risk factors for Non-Communicable Diseases with a particular focus on tobacco, alcohol, diet and inequalities in health. Along with serving as Co-Director of BR-UK she is Director of SPECTRUM, a research consortium that focuses on the commercial determinants of health. In her Scottish Government role, she provides Ministers with social and behavioural science advice and works on primary prevention across a range of policy areas from child poverty to population health. She is a former Scientific Adviser to the UK Department of Health, the World Health Organisation and Cancer Research UK on prevention and public health.

Professor Susan Michie

Co-Director

Co-Investigator

University College London

Susan Michie, FMedSci, FAcSS, FBA is Professor of Health Psychology, Director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London, UK. (www.ucl.ac.uk/behaviour-change) and co-Director of Behavioural Research-UK. Her research focuses on human behaviour change in relation to health and the environment: how to understand it theoretically and apply theory and evidence to intervention and policy development, evaluation and implementation. Collaborations include disciplines such as information science, environmental science, computer science and medicine, covering population, organisational and individual level interventions. She leads the Human Behaviour-Change Project (www.humanbehaviourchange.org). She has published >600 journal articles and several books, including the Behaviour Change Wheel: A Guide to Designing Interventions (www.behaviourchangewheel.com). She chairs WHO’s Behavioural Insights and Sciences Technical Advisory Group, is part of the Behavioural Science Policy Research Unit advising the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care and served on the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group in Emergencies during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr Sharon Cox

Deputy Director

Co-Investigator; Open Science Lead

Co-Lead on Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Intersectionality

University College London

Sharon Cox is Principal Research Fellow in the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group at UCL's Department of Behavioural Science and Health. For nearly 20 years, she has been studying the psychology of addictive behaviours, specifically around tobacco, nicotine and alcohol use. Her main research interest is tobacco-related health inequalities. She has a special interest in understanding the relationships between the social determinants of health and smoking. For this, she uses observational and experimental studies to highlight inequalities in smoking and designs clinical trials and other pragmatic studies to help people quit. She leads a programme of work on smoking and health inequalities at UCL and also leads several studies which aim to reduce smoking among people experiencing homelessness.

Co-Investigators and Work Package/Theme Leads

Name	Role in BR-UK	Institution	Biography
Professor Richard Amlot	Co-investigator	UK Health Security Agency	Richard Amlôt is Head of Behavioural Science in the Emergency Response Department at Public Health England (PHE). He leads a team conducting applied research and evaluation for PHE and its partners, applying insights from the behavioural sciences to a range of health protection topics, with a particular focus on public health emergency preparedness and response. He and his team have conducted responsive projects concerning the behavioural and psychological impacts of a range of major public health emergencies, including major flooding events in the UK, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and most recently the nerve agent attack in Salisbury. He is also the PHE Assistant Director of the Health Protection Research Unit in Emergency Preparedness and Response at King’s College London.
Professor Paul Aveyard	Co-investigator Theme 2 - Health and Wellbeing	University of Oxford	Paul Aveyard is a professor of behavioural medicine at the University of Oxford, and a practising GP. Paul works at the interface between primary care and public health, where his work centres on developing and testing low cost, high reach interventions to change behaviour to prevent non-communicable disease. His PhD was in epidemiology, and he has led various epidemiological studies using to examine the impacts of smoking cessation on health and the contributions of clinicians to changing behaviour as well as policy impacts, and on COVID-19. He draws on several disciplines to inform this work; biomedical science, psychology, and sociology, leading an interdisciplinary team.  Paul is a senior editor of the journal Addiction and is on several NHS England boards. These are NHS England Obesity Reference Group, NHS England National Obesity Audit Group, NHS England Low Calorie Diet for Diabetes Remission Group, NHS England Tobacco Dependence Stakeholder Group.
Professor Pedro Bordalo	Co-investigator Co-lead: Theme 4 - Organisations, Markets and The Economy	University of Oxford	Pedro Bordalo's areas of expertise are behavioural finance and behavioural economics. His work has focused on the role of selective attention and memory in driving attitudes towards risk and in shaping the content of beliefs and expectations. This approach can explain key evidence that is puzzling from the perspective of standard rational models, including systematic instability of risk preferences, predictability of stock and bond market returns, predictable forecast errors and boom-bust cycles in credit markets. Pedro’s research has been published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, and the American Economic Review, among other leading journals. He has been invited by regulatory entities such as the Competition and Markets Authority (UK), the Federal Trade Commission (US), and the Financial Conduct Authority to present his work and discuss policy implications.
Professor Jamie Brown	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Work Package 2 - Data and Technology	University College London	Jamie Brown is a Professor of Behavioural Science and Health and Director of the UCL Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group and leads a CRUK programme of research to i) provide insights from the Smoking Toolkit Study into population-wide influences on smoking and cessation and ii) advance the scientific foundation, and further the development of, potentially wide-reach digital behaviour change technologies. In over 250 publications, a particular focus has been on real-world monitoring and evaluation of national tobacco and alcohol policies and events. He is a co-author of Theory of Addiction (second edition) and ABC of Behaviour Change Theories, co-Regional Editor at the journal Addiction and an Editor of the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group.
Professor Lucie Byrne-Davis	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Theme 4 - Organisations, Markets and The Economy	University of Manchester	Lucie Byrne-Davis is Professor of Health Psychology & Director of International Education Partnerships, School of Medical Sciences, University of Manchester. She is an expert in translational, co-developed and international behaviour change research and practice. She has a particular focus on working within health partnerships between the UK and the Global South and studying organisational readiness to use and generate behavioural data. She is a co-founder of The Change Exchange, a prestigious collaboration of behaviour change experts engaged in research, consulting, and volunteering in the field of global health.
Dr Rachel Carey	Co-Investigator Capability Scoping	Zinc Ltd and University College London	Rachel Carey is an Honorary Research Associate in the Health Psychology Research Group and an Associate Consultant of UCL’s Centre for Behaviour Change. Following her PhD in Psychology, Rachel worked as a postdoctoral researcher at UCL, where she led the Theories and Techniques of Behaviour Change Project. Since 2017, Rachel has been working outside of academia as Chief Scientist with Zinc, an organisation that helps to build new, mission-driven start-ups. In 2020, as part of her role at Zinc, she was awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship. In her honorary role at UCL, she continues to deliver training and teaching in behavioural science, transport psychology, and digital healt
Mr Ben Cavanagh	Co-Investigator	Scottish Government	Ben Cavanagh is a social researcher in the Scottish Government Central Analysis Division. He works on qualitative and quantitative analysis of social capital, resilience and emergencies, culture participation in culture, and measuring government performance. He leads the Scottish Government’s Behavioural Insight Network, for officials and analysts across government who are working on policy areas that involve behaviour change outcomes.
Dr Jo Davan Wetton	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Work Package 1 - Capability Building	University College London	Jo Davan Wetton is a Senior Research Fellow at UCL Centre for Behaviour Change. She co-leads BR-UK's work on building capability in behavioural research. Jo specialises in pro-environmental behaviour change and the use of systems thinking, particularly the advancement of methods for behavioural systems mapping. Her projects have looked at urban climate mitigation, sustainable fashion, decarbonising homes, and systems of waste and recycling. Before joining BR-UK, Jo was awarded an ESRC Policy Fellowship to deliver research on behavioural science and net zero for Defra. She previously led behavioural science input to a multidisciplinary international project, Complex Urban Systems for Sustainability and Health (CUSSH). In consultancy and training projects Jo has worked with organisations including Welsh Government, BEIS and WRAP. She has also completed secondments with the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology and think tank Policy Connect.
Professor Oliver Escobar	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Work Package 4 - Engagement and Involvement	University of Edinburgh	Oliver Escobar  is Professor of Public Policy and Democratic Innovation at the University of Edinburgh. He works on public participation, policy innovation, the commons, political inequalities, and the governance of the future. Oliver combines research and practice to develop social and democratic innovations across various policy and community contexts in Scotland and internationally. He co-led the projects European Smart Urban Intermediaries (2017-2020), Distant Voices (2017-2020), and What Works Scotland (2014-2019), and currently co-leads on public engagement at the UKRI Behavioural Research Hub (2023-2028) and on political economy at the EU Horizon programme on Intersectional Spaces of Participation (2024-2027)
Professor Deborah Fry	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Theme 3 - Resilient Communities	University of Edinburgh	Deborah Fry is a Professor of International Child Protection Research at the University of Edinburgh and Director of Data for Childlight - Global Child Safety Institute. At the University, Deborah undertakes primary research to measure the magnitude, drivers and consequences of violence against children, barriers and enablers to appropriate prevention and response systems including in school settings and the effectiveness of existing interventions.
Mr Ashley Gould	Co-Investigator	Public Health Wales	Ashley Gould is a Consultant in Public Health and Programme Director of the Behavioural Science Unit at Public Health Wales. He is responsible for the strategic leadership and work of the Unit - providing specialist policy, technical and ad-hoc support and developing capability and system capacity in using behavioural science to improve and protect health and well-being, and reduce inequity. His work currently involves optimising policy, services and communications across communicable disease control, health harming behaviours, active travel, cancer screening and vaccine uptake, and in response to the climate crisis. Ashley is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology and Sport Science, Bangor University and Chair of the Risk Communication and Behavioural Insights Sub-Group of the Welsh Government’s Technical Advisory Group. Before becoming a Consultant in Public Health he worked in Environmental Health and policy roles, in local government and the NHS, in England and Wales.
Professor Ian Hamilton	Co-Investigator Theme 1-Environment and Sustainability	University College London	Ian Hamilton is Professor of Energy, Environment and Health whose research is focused on the nexus of energy, environment, and health. Ian’s research in the built environment is at the intersection of climate, energy and health. His research background is in evaluating climate mitigation actions and energy efficiency in the built environment their impact on energy demand and building energy performance, along with indoor and outdoor environmental conditions, and associated health and wellbeing outcomes. His research focuses on the intersectionality of climate actions for the sustainable transition of the built environment around a nexus of energy, environment, and health. His research goes beyond the singular focus of emissions reduction and instead looks to empower and protect citizens and address systemic inequities and his research team has provided novel findings and methods on the impacts of decarbonisation policy and technology adoption on building energy performance at a national and global building stock level, along with the intersectional impacts these actions have on urban environments, environmental exposures, human health, gender dynamics, and poverty.
Professor Joanne Hart	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Work Package 1 - Capability Building	University of Manchester	Jo Hart is a Health Psychologist, Professor of Health Professional Education, Head of the Division of Medical Education and Deputy Head of the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Manchester. She studies and supports the behaviour of healthcare professionals internationally, with a focus on education/training as a behaviour change intervention. She delivers and evaluates interventions that build capacity in health professionals to use behaviour change approaches. She co-founded The Change Exchange, a collaboration in which behavioural scientists work with UK and LMIC health partnerships.
Dr Janna Hastings	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Work Package 2 - Data and Technology	University College London and the University of Zurich	Janna Hastings is Assistant Professor of Medical Knowledge and Decision Support at the Universities of St. Gallen and Zurich. She is a computer scientist and Psychologist who studies the interface between technology and humans in medicine. Her research interests include the impact of digitalisation on clinical work, artificial intelligence for medical applications, evidence synthesis, and explainable AI. Janna supported the Human Behaviour Change Project during her time at UCL to develop an ontology for the domain of human behaviour change to gather together and aggregate all the evidence to answer the big question: 'What intervention(s) work, compared with what, how well, with what exposure, with what behaviours, for how long, for whom, in what settings and why?'. Professor Hastings remains an affiliated associate of the Centre for Behaviour Change (CBC) at UCL, though which association she continues to support ongoing projects within Behaviour Research UK (BR-UK).
Dr Shaun Helman	Co-Investigator Demo Project 5 Lead Co-lead: Theme 3 - Resilient Communities	TRL Ltd	Shaun Helman is TRL’s Chief Scientist for Behavioural Sciences. He is an applied psychologist with over two decades’ experience in transport research. His research and commentary focus on raising the standards of evaluation and evidence in the transport domain especially around the use of behavioural research. He is currently involved in research projects in general road safety, driver licensing, vulnerable road user safety (especially visibility and conspicuity) and work-related road safety. Before working at TRL Shaun has worked at QinetiQ (2004-2008), Cardiff Metropolitan University (then University of Wales Institute, Cardiff – 2002-2004) and at the University of Reading (1999-2002).
Professor David Lagnado	Co-Investigator Demo Project 2 Lead Co-lead: Work Package 3 - Methods and Evidence Synthesis	University College London	David Lagnado is Professor of Cognitive and Decision Sciences at the Experimental Psychology Department, UCL. He studies how people make decisions in an uncertain and changing world, with a focus on causal inference. He has published over 150 articles and written two books, Straight Choices: The psychology of decision-making (2022) and Explaining the evidence: How the mind investigates the world (2021). He is currently an investigator on an EPSRC project ‘Causal counterfactual visualisation for clinicahl decisions’ and an NWO project ‘Preventing miscarriages of justice’. He has worked with US intelligence, UK government, and various global companies, applying behavioural science to real-world problems.
Dr Aideen Maguire	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Work Package 2 - Data and Technology	Queen's University Belfast	Aideen Macguire is a Psychiatric Epidemiologist whose research includes using population wide health & administrative data to better understand mental ill-health and suicide. Aideen works closely with a range of government Departments & charitable organisations.
Dr Laura McGowan	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Theme 2 - Health and Wellbeing	Queen's University Belfast	Laura McGowan is an experienced psychologist specialising in public health, focusing on the role of psychology and behavioural science in health-promoting behaviours. As a Senior Lecturer in Nutrition and Behaviour Change within the Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast, her research focuses the development of behaviour change interventions focused on diet, and obesity, covering prevention, management, & weight stigma, working collaboratively across disciplines. It involves qualitative and quantitative methods, including analysis of routine healthcare data, and embeds lived experience throughout. She co-leads on psychology and behavioural science content in the medical curriculum at Queen’s University Belfast. Laura previously worked at the Public Health Agency NI and University College London. She leads the Association for the Study of Obesity Northern Ireland Network, and is Past Chair of the Division of Health Psychology, NI. Laura works alongside policy and practice colleagues at the Department of Health NI and Public Health Agency.
Professor Graham Moore	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Theme 2 - Health and Wellbeing	Cardiff University	Graham Moore is a Professor of Social Sciences and Public Health in Cardiff University's School of Social Sciences, and a Health and Care Research Wales Senior Research Leader. He co-leads Theme 2 of BR-UK (Health and Wellbeing). His methodological research interests centre on improving methodologies for developing, evaluating and implementing social interventions. His substantive interests focus broadly focus on child and adolescent health inequalities and social interventions, with an emphasis on mental health and health related behaviours.
Professor Ann Phoenix	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Work Package 4 - Engagement and Involvement; Co-Lead on EDII	University College London	Ann Phoenix is Professor of Psychosocial studies at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, Department of Social Science, UCL Institute of Education. She is a trustee of the Nuffield Foundation and a member of the Holberg Prize Committee. Her research focuses on the ways in which psychological experiences and social processes are linked and intersectional. It includes racialised and gendered identities, mixed-parentage, masculinities, consumption, motherhood, families, migration and transnational families. A major focus of her work is understanding of the ways in which narratives are linked with possibilities for social action.
Professor Nicholas Pidgeon	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Theme 1 - Environment and Sustainability	Cardiff University	Nick Pidgeon is Professor of Environmental Psychology and Risk at Cardiff University and Director of its Understanding Risk Research Group. He researches public engagement, risk communication and decision making for environment, climate, energy and emerging technology risks. He has directed research projects for UKRI, Charities and USNSF on these topics over a 30-year span including two programmes on science, public engagement and risk for the Leverhulme Trust. Currently a science advisor to the UK Department of Transport and to the Welsh Government, he served on two UK Covid19 advisory committees and was awarded an MBE in 2014 for services to climate change and energy security awareness. His main current research focuses on low carbon energy use in everyday life, community and psychosocial implications of industrial decarbonisation, and technologies for carbon removal in global and UK agriculture. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2023
Dr Lucy Porter	Co-lead Demo Project 1	University College London	Lucy Porter is a Lecturer in Behaviour Change at UCL Centre for Behaviour Change. She co-leads BR-UK's Demo Project 1, which aims to explore the barriers to the effective use of evidence-based behavioural science advice in national policy-making during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lucy specialises in using qualitative methods and the Behaviour Change Wheel framework to assess behavioural barriers and enablers and develop behaviour change interventions. Having previously worked as a Principal Behavioural Scientist at Public Health England and the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities, her research typically focuses on behaviour change within the field of public health across individual, organisational and population levels, with specific interests in eating behaviours and reducing health inequalities. Lucy has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Exeter.
Professor Nichola Raihani	Co-Lead Work Package 3 - Methods and Evidence Synthesis	University College London and the University of Auckland	Nichola Raihani is Professor in Evolution and Behaviour at University College London and University of Auckland. Her group’s research focuses on the evolution of social behaviour in humans and non-human species and sits at the interface of evolutionary biology, economics and experimental psychology. Her work explores a variety of topics, including how reputation and punishment support cooperation, the antecedents and consequences of paranoia and conspiracy thinking, and how people trade off cooperation at local and global scales. Raihani won the 2018 Philip Leverhulme Prize in Psychology and her book, The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World, won the Humanists UK 2021 Voltaire Medal and the 2023 ZSL Clarivate Award. She has delivered several high-profile, public-facing lectures including the Humanist Society’s Voltaire Medal lecture, TEDx Manchester, and at the Royal Institution. At UCL, she is strategic lead for UCL Changing Minds (an initiative that delivers executive education in applied behavioural insights) and BIX (an initiative that pairs M-level students with external organisations to conduct an applied research project). Raihani has also worked with a variety of external organisations, including JustGiving, CentrePoint and Ogilvy, to help them apply academic insights into real-world settings.
Professor Stephen Reicher	Co-Investigator Co-lead: Work Package 4 - Engagement and Involvement	University of St Andrews	Stephen Reicher's area of research is broadly the issues of group behaviour and the individual-social relationship. More specifically, his recent research can be grouped into three areas. The first is an attempt to develop a model of crowd action that accounts for both social determination and social change. The second concerns the construction of social categories through language and action. The third concerns political rhetoric and mass mobilisation - especially around the issue of national identity.
Professor David Shipworth	Co-Investigator Demo Project 4 Lead Co-lead: Theme 1 - Environment and Sustainability	University College London	David Shipworth is Professor of Energy and the Built Environment at the UCL Energy Institute and Chair of the User-Centred Energy Systems Technology Collaboration Programme by IEA. His research focuses on how people use technologies to turn energy into the services they want such as comfort, mobility and cleanliness. At the individual level he is interested in the ways people permit, purchase and allow their technologies to participate in the energy system to provide demand flexibility, and how product manufacturers, energy regulators, and the design of buildings can facilitate this. At the community level he is interested in how communities reach and maintain social consensus around the socially good outcomes they want from their energy system and how these can be aligned with delivering national energy and environmental requirements. David speaks and consults widely in the UK and internationally the role of users in the energy transition.
Professor Thomas Webb	Co-Investigator Demo Project 3 Lead Co-lead: Work Package 3 - Methods and Evidence Synthesis	University of Sheffield	Thomas Webb is Professor of Psychology at the University of Sheffield. He has published over 100 papers on fundamental issues in behavioural research, including the role of motivation, self-monitoring, planning, and emotion-regulation. His recent research applies these insights to issues around sustainability and he currently leads the behavioural science components of large multidisciplinary projects tackling plastic waste, including Many Happy Returns (funded by the SSPP challenge) and BUDDIE-PACK, funded by the European Commission. From a methodological perspective, Thomas has expertise in systematic reviews and meta-analyses and is currently Associate Editor at Psychological Bulletin, which focuses on evidence syntheses and is APA’s top-cited journal (IF = 23). Thomas also has an interest in using ontologies to improve behavioural research and has led an ESRC-funded project (TURBBO) that used ontologies to answer questions about how behaviours are related.
Dr Rosie Webster	Capability Scoping	Zinc Ltd	Rosie Webster is a behavioural scientist with a PhD in health psychology. She has extensive experience working on digital behaviour change products, both in academia and startups. She has spent the last few years leading user research and applied behavioural science in the tech for good space, specialising in digital health. Rosie now works at Zinc, helping very early-stage social good startups to bring science, research, and evidence into their businesses.

Researchers

Name	Area of Research	Institution	Biography
Dr Julze Alejandre	Work Package 4 - Engagement and Involvement	University of Edinburgh	Julze Alejandre is a Research Fellow in Public Engagement, working on embedding public engagement and stakeholder involvement approaches, as well as equality, diversity, inclusion, and intersectionality principles in behavioural research. Before joining academia, Julze worked as a health promotion and policy specialist for government and international non-government organisations in the Philippines and the UK, focusing on food, nutrition, and health and social care policies. Interested in health, environmental sustainability, behaviour change, and knowledge mobilisation, Julze completed his PhD in sustainable healthcare and implementation science as a Scottish Government Hydro Nation scholar at Glasgow Caledonian University, where he designed Scotland’s first blue-green prescribing programme for primary mental healthcare. Julze also worked on One Health and Planetary Health policies, as a senior parliamentary intern at the House of Lords of the UK Parliament. Julze completed his MSc in Public Health and Health Promotion as a UK Government Chevening scholar at Bangor University in Wales, and a BSc in Nutrition at University of the Philippines.
Dr Harriet Baird	Demo & Work Package 3 - Methods and Evidence Synthesis	University of Sheffield	Harriet Baird is a lecturer in Psychology at the University of Sheffield. She has interests and expertise in self-regulation and in the design, application, and evaluation of interventions designed to promote positive changes in people’s behaviour. Harriet collaborates with a range of stakeholders to understand behaviour in different contexts, and she works on a number of large, interdisciplinary projects. Most recently Harriet’s research has considered the role of human behaviour in tackling environmental challenges (e.g., reducing plastic waste), and on projects that use ontologies to advance research in the behavioural sciences. From a methodological perspective, Harriet has expertise in conducting systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and quantitative data analysis.
Dr Nia Coupe	Research Fellow Work Package 1 - Capability Building	University of Manchester	Nia Coupe is a BR-UK Research Fellow at The University of Manchester. Nia is a qualitative researcher and behavioural scientist by background, with broad research experience across the areas of mental health, health psychology and public health. Nia completed her MPhil (Primary Care) and a PhD (Health Psychology) at the University of Manchester, and prior to this role was working as both principal behavioural and social scientist in the Department of Health and Social Care, and a lecturer in psychology. She brings expertise specifically in health behaviour change, health inequalities, intervention design, qualitative methods and stakeholder involvement. She has a keen interest in behaviours which impact both public and planetary health, and is co-chair of the UKSBM Climate Change SIG.
Dr Niamh Hart	Various: including Work Package 4 - Engagement and Involvement	University of Edinburgh	Niamh Hart is a BR-UK Research Fellow working on qualitative aspects of building capability in behavioural research, the behavioural concepts group and public engagement and stakeholder input. Before BR-UK, Niamh graduated with a BSc in Psychology from Ulster University and an MSc in Physical Activity for Health at the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre (PAHRC), University of Edinburgh, with an interest in health behaviours. Niamh went on to complete a PhD “PAUSE… Breathe & Stretch: Creating an Evidence-Based Yoga Resource for Mainstream Schools” at the University of Edinburgh, utilising stakeholder input to understand and manage the barriers and facilitators experienced by students and teachers to using yoga in schools. Niamh is also a qualified yoga instructor delivering yoga and yoga-related education within Edinburgh since 2017.
Jack Hitchings	Demo Project 5	TRL Ltd	Jack Hitchings is a Behavioural Sciences Researcher at TRL with several years’ experience of conducting and applying evidence-based research. He is qualified to Masters level in Psychology having attained his degrees from Abertay University wherein his research had a focus on stress coping mechanisms and wellbeing. In his time at TRL, he has developed key strengths in conducting secondary research and qualitative research. Jack’s work in transport research has covered a broad range of topics, but he has developed specific areas of interest in young drivers, older drivers, new mobility, and accessibility.
Dr Vyv Huddy	Work Package 3 - Methods and Evidence Synthesis	University of Sheffield	Vyv Huddy is a Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of Sheffield. He divides his time across doing research, training mental health practitioners and in consultancy roles. He has three areas of research interest: the first is focused on increasing access to mental healthcare and facilitating service implementation; the second is focused on understanding the social determinants of mental health, and the third aims to increase clinical psychology's contribution to public mental health approaches. This final area has been facilitated by joining the research team delivering the ESRC funded TURBBO project, which aimed to learn how to use ontologies as a means of connecting health practitioners with the high quality evidence generated by behavioural science.
Dr Bridie Kemp	Theme 2 - Health and Wellbeing	Queens University Belfast	Bridie Kemp is a Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast and registered Associate Nutritionist, with up to 8 years’ experience in human health and wellbeing research, particularly in chronic disease prevention through behaviour change. Her research to date has centred around populations with diabetes, overweight/obesity, and those at high risk of developing cardiovascular disease, their related risk factors, and behaviours. She is currently working on the Health and Wellbeing Theme of BR-UK, and has experience in qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research, including scoping and systematic reviews, questionnaire data, anthropometric and clinical measures, interviews, focus groups and longitudinal data analysis. Her PhD research, also at QUB involved coordinating, co-designing, developing, and evaluating an intervention involving lifestyle behaviour change to reduce cardiovascular disease risk in families, by utilising the Behaviour Change Wheel and the IDEAS eHealth intervention development framework. Before her PhD, Bridie completed a BSc in Human Nutrition from Ulster University and worked in the Public Health Nutrition team of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland.
Dr Suvodeep Mazumdar	Work Package 3 - Methods and Evidence Synthesis	University of Sheffield	Suvodeep Mazumdar is Senior Lecturer in Data Analytics at the Information School, University of Sheffield. His PhD focused on applying interactive visualisations and User-Centered Design techniques to support exploration of large semantic datasets. Suvodeep’s research interests explore developing techniques and mechanisms for reducing the barrier for user communities in understanding very large complex multidimensional datasets. His research has been applied to a wide range of disciplines such as Aerospace engineering, Sports Informatics, Crisis/Emergency Management, Smart Cities and Mobility Planning.
Professor Paul Norman	Work Package 3 - Methods and Evidence Synthesis	University of Sheffield	Paul Norman is a Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the application of social cognition models (e.g., theory of planned behaviour, health belief model, protection motivation theory) to the prediction of health behaviour. His more recent work has focused on developing and testing interventions to change health behaviour, including the use of online interventions. He has co-edited one of the key books in this area, Predicting and Changing Health Behaviour, and has over 150 publications in peer-reviewed journals. His research has attracted funding from NIHR, MRC, ESRC and various charities. He has been Secretary (2000-2006) and President (2010-2012) of the European Health Psychology Society and Editor-in-Chief (2001-2006) of the journal Psychology and Health.
Dr Amy Rodger	Various including: Demo Projects 2 & 5	University of Edinburgh	Amy Rodger is a research fellow at BR-UK, utilises quantitative and mixed methods to assess human decision-making and behaviour change, focusing on pivotal policy issues like public health and climate change. Passionate about methodology and meta-science movements to enhance behavioural research rigour, she oversees BR-UK's presence on the Open Science Framework platform. She is also leveraging her experience as a Scottish Government research intern to develop the hubs 'Ask BR-UK' service. Amy completed her MSc in Research Methods of Psychological Science and PhD, "Water drinking is a complex health behaviour: implications for theory and intervention development," at the University of Glasgow. She has also evaluated behaviour change interventions targeting sustainable consumption and student well-being through various research assistant roles. Amy has begun collaborating with the UN’s Playing for the Planet programme to assess the potential of video games to foster climate action within player communities.
Professor Richard Rowe	Work Package 3 - Methods and Evidence Synthesis	University of Sheffield	Richard Rowe's research addresses the factors underlying risky and antisocial behaviours in young people and the development of interventions to reduce these problematic behaviours. Major focusses have been on conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder in children and adolescents, and risky driving in young motorists. Other work has addressed suicide, self-harm and alcohol use. He has been involved in evaluating existing evaluations (e.g., for South Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership) and designing novel interventions which have taken a variety of forms. In all cases interventions are informed by an understanding of the causal factors that underlie the target behaviour and by theories of behaviour change.
Dr Kitty Saunders	Capability Building	Government Office for Science	Dr Kitty Saunders is a Senior Policy Fellow with Behavioural Research-UK at UCL and seconded to the Government Office for Science. Kitty has a BSc in Experimental Psychology from the University of Bristol, an MSc in Forensic Mental Health Research from KCL, and a mixed methods PhD in Psychiatric Epidemiology from KCL, exploring the association between domestic violence perpetration and mental health. On the completion of her PhD in 2021, she joined the Policy Research Unit for Mental Health as a postdoctoral Research Associate where she led and contributed to rapid policy research to inform mental health policy at the UK Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and other governmental bodies. Her work at the policy research unit included research on trauma informed care in inpatient, acute and emergency mental health services, adaptations of mental health services for autistic adults and children, the effectiveness and experience of peer support work for mental health, and evaluation planning for the new Mental Health Act in England.
Dr Melanie Simmonds-Buckley	Work Package 3 - Methods and Evidence Synthesis	University of Sheffield	Melanie Simmonds-Buckley is a Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of Sheffield, alongside a part-time role as a Clinical Research Fellow in Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber (RDASH) NHS Foundation Trust. Her research interests are the use of digital health technology and personalised precision medicine approaches for mental health treatment to support improved patient care and outcomes. She has extensive experience in the use of quantitative methods, including meta-analysis, single case experimental design, network analysis and working with large datasets to develop prediction models.
Dr Lesley Uttley	Work Package 3 - Methods and Evidence Synthesis	University of Sheffield	Lesley Uttley is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Medicine and Population Health, University of Sheffield. She is a career development award holder (2020-2024) and transition support award holder (2025-2026) for investigating human influences in systematic reviews and meta-analyses, funded by the UKRI Medical Research Council (MRC). As well as leading https://systematicreviewlution.com/ and working on BR-UK, Lesley is also an EDI Fellow for the NIHR funded Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre (2024-2026) and an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology <https://www.jclinepi.com/>. Her work is particularly focussed on research integrity, research culture and human influences in research.
Professor Robert West	Work Package 3 - Methods and Evidence Synthesis	University College London	Robert West is Professor Emeritus of Health Psychology at University College London. He specialises in behaviour change. He is former Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal, Addiction, and has acted as an advisor to the English Department of Health on tobacco control and currently advises the Public Health Wales Behavioural Science Unit. He helped write the blueprint for the UK’s national network of stop-smoking clinics and is co-founder of the Capability-Opportunity-Motivation, Behaviour (COM-B) model of behaviour, the Behaviour Change Wheel framework for intervention development, and the PRIME Theory of motivation. He has published more than 900 scientific papers and is one of the world’s top cited smoking cessation experts.
Lisa Zhang	Work Package 1 - Capability Building	University College London	Lisa Zhang is a Research Assistant at the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change. She is currently working on Demo Project 1 within BR-UK, which aims to understand the translation of behavioural and social science advice to UK Government during Covid-19. Outside of BR-UK, she is also working on the Human Behaviour-Change Project, and in particular, developing an ontology to describe aspects of behaviour change interventions. Her research interests include intervention development and evaluation, and applying behaviour change principles to real-world issues such as environmental sustainability and public health. Lisa received a MSc in Behaviour Change from UCL in 2021, and previously worked as a Behavioural Scientist at the UK Health Security Agency.

Research Support

Name	Role in BR-UK	Institution	Biography
Sancha Martin	BR-UK Programme Manager	University of Edinburgh	Sancha has over 15 years of experience in research management. She began her scientific journey as a Finisher on the Human Genome Project, which fostered her belief in the importance of collaborative research and publishing the outputs of that research freely and widely for others to build upon. Previous projects Sancha managed include: the SPECTRUM Consortium (University of Edinburgh), Precision-Panc and Scottish Genomes Partnership (University of Glasgow) and the International Cancer Genome Consortium Breast Cancer Working Groups (Wellcome Sanger Institute).
Ellie Dawe Black	Edinburgh BR-UK Administrator	University of Edinburgh	Based in the Usher Institute in the University of Edinburgh, Ellie provides administrative support to the BR-UK team, working closely with Sancha and Milly. She oversees BR-UK's communication functions and supports a number of working groups within the Hub. Her administrative background is primarily from the public sector in Northern Ireland where she worked in public facing roles.
Dr Milly Massoura	UCL BR-UK Administrator	University College London	Based at the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change (CBC), Milly provides administrative support across BR-UK working closely with Sancha and Ellie. Before BR-UK Milly was at the University of Kent working in Research and Innovation Services. Milly has a background in life sciences, completing her BSc (hons) in Medical Biochemistry and PhD in molecular pharmacology at the University of Birmingham. Following this she worked at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) as a business support officer. Milly has a wide range of experience in providing support to researchers at all levels in a variety of disciplines.

PhD Students

Name	Role in BR-UK	Institution	Biography
Amy Waghorne	PhD In Kind	University of Manchester	Amy Waghorne has worked as a research assistant at The University of Manchester for the past 16 months. During this time, Amy has worked on the Demo Project 1, that aims to understand the translation of behavioural science advice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Amy holds a BSc in Psychology and MSc in Heath Psychology from Northumbria University. Having completed her role as a research assistant, Amy has been awarded a PhD studentship at The University of Manchester through the ESRC BR-UK leadership hub. She will begin her PhD, titled ‘Understanding the conditions for organisations to contribute to behavioural research’ in September 2024.

This article was published on 2024-09-24