Gillian joined the School of Health and Life Sciences at Teesside University, in 2015 to start work on her PhD which was entitled ‘Exploring the factors affecting the implementation of tobacco and substance use interventions within the secondary school setting’ and was funded via Fuse.

Following the completion of her PhD in 2018, Gillian has worked on multiple large research projects, across different roles and is now a Research Associate and Senior Research Manager in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law.

Her main research interests are around substance use, implementation science and research focusing on young people. She is currently working on several projects with her primary role being the project manager for 'Your Voice Heard' which is exploring the experiences of young people and parents engaging with suicide and self-harm services. She also provides support to other research projects mainly consisting of qualitative data collection, using the implementation theory Normalization Process Theory and writing papers, reports and book chapters.

Research interests (in brief):

• Co-production and translational research.
• Health Improvement and Interventions.
• Implementation Science.
• Young People.
• Qualitative Research Methods.

Current projects:

• Your Voice Heard- Exploring the experiences of young people and parents engaging with self-harm and suicide services.
• APPRAISE- A feasibility study exploring alcohol brief interventions for male remand prisoners.
• What is in a Meter? A study exploring the use and implementation of different metering technology in Mumbai, India.