My academic interest is in Research Ethics and Integrity, specifically human participant medical and defence research. I work closely with the UK Health Research Authority (HRA), and alongside chairing a number of Research Ethics Committees (RECs), have also contributed to projects including the Community Committee, Think Ethics, Make it Public, the COVID human challenge REC, and the fast track REC pilot. I also chair the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) Research Ethics and Governance Group (REGG), the Ministry of Defence's Research Ethics Committee (MODREC), and am a member of a NATO research task group in human participant research ethics. I was a trustee of the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) between 2022 and 2025, before taking on the role of an Associate Trainer in research ethics where I have contributed to the UKRIO online research ethics and integrity courses alongside providing national workshops and training.

Prior to moving into ethics my background was in biochemistry (PhD, Southampton 2005) with several years as a post-doctoral research fellow at UCL medical school where our work on a small molecule depleter of C-reactive protein was published on the front cover of Nature, and a second project developing drugs targeting the serum protein Transthyretin was patented and licensed to the pharmaceutical company GSK. I joined the University of Portsmouth in 2012 as a Senior Fellow, and then Senior Lecturer, in Biochemistry funded by a BBSRC new investigators award. Following further degrees in Philosophy (BA, Open) and Research Ethics (MA, Keele), I moved to a Senior Lectureship in Evidence Based Healthcare (2017), Associate Professor of Bioethics (2021), and Professor of Research Ethics (2026).

• Research Ethics, Integrity and Governance
• Ethics committee review: quality and consistency
• Defence and dual use research
• Human Challenge Trials
• Research Waste
• Research Culture