Sally has more than fifteen years’ experience of applied research in health and wellbeing and currently leads on this area of policy research at IES. Her work spans occupational health and safety, stress and mental health, as well as chronic illness and disability. Sally has a particular interest in workplace mental wellbeing, including interventions to manage workplace stressors, as well as measures to help people return and re-enter work who have lived experience of mental health conditions. More broadly her expertise also extends to quality of work, work-life balance and working while caring. She recently project managed a large evaluation for the Social Care Institute for Excellence looking at local interventions to support carers in employment.

Sally has a background in behavioural and health sciences having completed a PhD in neuropsychology at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, which involved case study work with patients at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. Within IES, Sally has worked with a wide range of clients including the Ministry of Defence, the Health and Safety Executive, the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), Mind, Macmillan and the Police Federation of England Wales (PFEW). In a European context she has managed a number of research projects for EU-OSHA (the European Agency for Occupational Safety and Health at Work), including an evaluation of an EU-wide initiative to raise awareness of health and safety among school-age children.

At a more local level, Sally worked with a London Borough to evaluate a health mentoring and referral scheme for young people, delivered in a youth centre setting. Currently she is leading an evaluation of Mind’s Workplace Wellbeing Index for employers and advising on the remit of a Public Health England project on worklessness.

Before joining IES she worked at the Health and Safety Laboratory (part of the Health and Safety Executive) and at the Sheffield Institute for Studies on Ageing, as well as the Age and Cognitive Performance Research Centre at the University of Manchester.