Name
Position
Prof Helen L. Ball, BSc, MA, PhD
Director
Dr Amanda Tan
Associate Director
Sophie Lovell-Kennedy, MAnth. (Medical Anthropology)
PhD Candidate, Sleep Lab Manager
Laura Grieve, MSc (Medical Anthropology)
DISC Coordinator, Sleep Lab Manager
Ms. Lenka Medvecová Tinková Mgr. et Bc. (Medical Anthropology)
PhD Candidate
Ms Himani Dalmia
MSc by Research Candidate
Ms Ingrid Boedker, BA, MSc (Psychology)
PhD Candidate, Liverpool John Moores University
Honorary Associates are previous DISC members with whom we continue to collaborate on research projects, publications, and external engagement.
Dr Lyn Robinson, BSc, MScR, Ph.D
Research Fellow, University of York
Dr Kristin Tully
Collaborative for Maternal and Infant Health, University of North Carolina
Dr Alanna Rudzik
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, SUNY Oneonta
Dr Anna Cronin de Chavez
Research Fellow, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Our collaborators are leading researchers at other institutions in the UK and around the world with whom we conduct research, pursue future research funding, write publications, and hold research workshops. Our collaborators also support our external engagement efforts by speaking at our biennial Durham Infancy and Sleep Centre Conferences.
Dr Martin Ward-Platt
The late Dr Martin Ward-Platt was a Consultant Neonatologist for Newcastle Neonatal Services, Royal Victoria Infirmary, and Reader in Neonatal & Paediatric Medicine, at the University of Newcastle, Clinical Director of the Regional Maternity Survey Office, and Senior Editor of the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
Dr Pete Blair
Dr Pete Blair is a medical statistician and SIDS epidemiologist in the School of Social and Community Medicine at the University of Bristol. Pete has worked with the Durham Infancy and Sleep Centre Team on and off for almost 20 years, collaborating on publications, funding applications, and outreach.
Dr Pamela Douglas
Dr Pam Douglas has been an Australian GP since 1987 and is Medical Director of the non-profit Possums Clinic in Brisbane, Queensland. She is also holds an Associate Adjunct Professorship with the Centre for Health Practice Innovation at Griffith University, and is a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of General Practice at The University of Queensland.
Pam has a special interest in the care of new families, mental health, and women's health. Her medical research focusses around the way in which health professionals approach the complex problem of unsettled infant behaviour, and offers integrated, evidence-informed clinical guidelines.
Dr Cecilia Tomori, Johns Hopkins
Cecilia’s monograph ‘Night-time breastfeeding: an American cultural dilemma’ is an excellent example of ethnography applied to the tensions and stigma involved in bed-sharing. Cecilia was a member of the Department of Anthropology in Durham from 2017 to 2020 and she continues to collaborate with the DISC team. Cecilia is now Director of Global Public Health and Community Health at John Hopkins University, and author of the 2023 Lancet Breastfeeding Series.
Professor Megan Galbally
Professor Megan Galbally is Foundation Chair in Perinatal Psychiatry, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia. Megan's research interests include early parenting practices (breastfeeding, sleep, parent-child relationship) and mental health and models of antenatal care for women with Borderline Personality Disorder, Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder.
Professor Hideya Kodama
Professor Hideya Kodama is the Dean of Maternity and Child Nursing at Akita Graduate School in Akita, Japan. His research interests are in the physiology of infant sleep, including the development of the melatonin rhythm.
Dr Maartje Luijk
Dr Maartje Luijk is Assistant Professor in the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Her research interests are in the study of everyday parenting practices, like sleep routines, to chaotic family circumstances and marital discord that can precede problematic child outcomes.
Dr Victoria Thomas
Dr Victoria Thomas is a Consultant Paediatrician at the Great North Children's Hospital, Newcastle-upon-Tyne with a strong interest in infant feeding and sleeping issues.
In a new collaboration that commenced in 2016, she is working with the Durham Infancy and Sleep Centre Team on the Coping with infant sleep project, which aims to provide new parents with a better understanding of their infant's sleep biology, and practical strategies for coping with the sleep disruption of new parenthood.
Dr Eduardo Moya
Dr Eduardo Moya is a Consultant Paediatrician and Lead Paediatrician for Child Deaths at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds. His special interests are in respiratory medicine including allergy and asthma.
It was Eduardo's role in attending Sudden and Unexpected Infant Deaths in Bradford that led to his collaboration with Professor Helen Ball and the Durham Infancy and Sleep Centre Team at Durham. Eduardo proposed that as part of the Born in Bradford cohort study, the discrepancy in SIDS rates between South Asian and White British families in Bradford should be examined. As SIDS is closely related to infant care practices, We were invited to help devise a large scale survey of BiB families, followed up by a detailed interview study know collectively as BradICS (the Bradford Infant Care Study), for which we obtained funding from the Lullaby Trust.
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