Professor Christina Victor is Professor of Gerontology and Public Health and Vice Dean (Research) in the College of Health and Life Sciences at Brunel University, London.
Her main research interests are focussed upon healthy ageing and she is a core member of the Brunel Initiative for Ageing Studies (BIAS) within the Institute of Environment, Health and Societies.More specifically her research interests include health and health inequalities in later life; evaluation of services for older people; loneliness and isolation; the benefits of exercise and activity in later life and the experiences of old age and later life amongst minority communities.
Christina has published 13 books and over 200 papers in the fields of gerontology and public health and has a keen interest in promoting research and in research impact. Her initial work on loneliness funded by ESRC contributed to the development of the charity The Campaign to End Loneliness. She has published widely in the field of social gerontology and has provided numerous media interviews and expert briefings with policy makers, practitioners, politicians/ministers and older people on this subject. She is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and Editor in Chief of Ageing and Society, the leading European based gerontology journal.
Dr. Mary Pat Sullivan is a Canadian trained social worker with over ten years’ experience developing, delivering and evaluating geriatric mental health services in Ontario. She is currently Division Lead for Social Work at Brunel University London. Her principal research interests are focussed around gerontological social work practice including geriatric mental health, dementia care, social isolation and loneliness, elder abuse and ageing without children. She is currently Honorary Secretary of the British Society of Gerontology and on the Editorial Board for the journal Ageing & Society.
Mike Thomas is a Lecturer in Social Work in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent. His broad research interests include the diversity of contemporary family life, with a particular focus on LGB identities within family and other social networks. Before joining Kent in January 2014, he completed a PhD in social policy at Cardiff University, focusing on same-sex marriage and civil partnerships in the UK, Canada and California. He qualified as a social worker in 2007 and had worked previously in central government, specialising in international policy in a number of departments including the Home Office, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the Department for Work and Pensions.
Rachel Woodbridge is a Health and Social Sciences PhD student/researcher at Brunel University London with a keen interest in loneliness research. She is particularly interested in how loneliness affects people in later life and with conditions such as dementia. She has a background in Psychology and research with people with cognitive disorders such as stroke and her PhD project is looking at coping and difficulties at home for people with dementia. She's actively involved with loneliness research at Brunel, assisting with literature reviews and analysis of longitudinal data on loneliness in older age.
Emma Harding is a Research Assistant on the NIHR/ESRC funded study 'Seeing What they See' which is investigating dementia related visual loss and environmental interventions (UCL and Brunel University London collaboration). She has a degree in psychology and keen interests in qualitative methods, ageing research and the experience of living with a degenerative condition.