People

Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing

	Professor Charlotte Clarke Executive Director
Since 2019, Professor Clarke has served as Executive Dean for our Faculty of Social Sciences and Health. Previously she was Dean International for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. She has been a sub-panel member for RAE 2008, REF 2014 and REF 2021. In her research, Professor Clarke has worked to address health inequalities and stigma and has influenced international health and social care policy and practice in relation to dementia. Professor Clarke is also serving as Associate PVC (Health) and will work across the University and with external partners to encourage and support world-leading health research and education, helping more people to thrive in the places they live, locally and globally. She will work with health practitioners, researchers, funders, local and national government.

Professor Charlotte Clarke

Executive Director

Since 2019, Professor Clarke has served as Executive Dean for our Faculty of Social Sciences and Health.

Previously she was Dean International for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. She has been a sub-panel member for RAE 2008, REF 2014 and REF 2021.

In her research, Professor Clarke has worked to address health inequalities and stigma and has influenced international health and social care policy and practice in relation to dementia.

Professor Clarke is also serving as Associate PVC (Health) and will work across the University and with external partners to encourage and support world-leading health research and education, helping more people to thrive in the places they live, locally and globally.

She will work with health practitioners, researchers, funders, local and national government.

Professor Barbara Bechter

Co-Director

Barbara is Associate Professor in Human Resource Management at Durham University Business School (DUBS). She is a social scientist, she developed and led multidisciplinary projects and managed international project teams. With her international and interdisciplinary research, she contributes to policy debates around new forms of employment and their regulation. She is especially interested in the link between employment and health. Her research extends beyond the workplace by investigating interventions and support provided by social partner organisations at organisational, national and transnational level to improve the health and safety of workers.

Professor Brian Castellani

Co-Director

Brian joined the Department of Sociology at Durham University in 2018. Trained as a sociologist, clinical psychologist and methodologist, he is also an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry (Northeast Ohio Medical University); Co-Editor of the Routledge Complexity in Social Science series; Co-Editor of the International Journal of Social Research Methodology and on the editorial board for Complexity, Governance and Networks. My areas of research are the complexities of place and health, communities and global civil society, computational modeling and mixed-methods, complexity theory and policy evaluation and big data and digital sociology

Brian is resolutely international and interdisciplinary in his work, regularly publishing with colleagues from across the entire academy – from maths and physics to medicine and environmental science – and around the world. Brian's work is also juxtaposed between the theoretical, methodological and applied, with his research, at any given moment, moving variously from one emphasis to the other.

Associate Professor Dr Jonathan Wistow

Co-Director

Jonathan is an Associate Professor and joined the Department of Sociology as a Research Fellow in 2007, working in the field of health inequalities. His research in this area focuses on the application of qualitative comparative analysis to health inequalities and links to broader debates about governance and public policy implementation. He subsequently worked on a number of projects concentrating on climate change adaptation in health and social care systems. He recently completed a book called Social Policy, Political Economy and the Social Contract that ties together a range of diverse but related research interests, through employing complexity and social contract theory to understand the trajectory of the political economy and its interrelationship with policy. I am now working on research into the UK Government’s Levelling Up agenda alongside ongoing research into health inequalities and the impact of air pollution on brain health.

Mrs Suzanne Boyd (DipHE)

Institute Manager

Suzanne is the Senior Officer of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing. Suzanne is responsible for the day to day running of the Institute, dealing with matters pertaining to HR, budget, committee support and management, project support and Fellowship support. She is responsible for the Institute website, fortnightly newsletter and social media accounts.