1. How did your interest in ageing begin, and why?

I was very close to both of my grandmothers and by their example they taught me very early on in life that an open and enthusiastic attitude to life is not limited by chronological age and that older people have so much to teach us in terms of resilience. My paternal grandmother lived until 1997, her 101st year; in 1984 following the death of her daughter she moved in with her son-in-law and two grandsons to care for them. Living all her life on a farm her motto was ‘on with the buckets’.

2. What are your key areas of interest, and why?

Policy and its impact on public health. I am a health visitor and one of the principles guiding our practice is to influence policies affecting health.

3. Please can you briefly outline your career?

I qualified as a nurse, midwife and health visitor in the 1980s. In 1990 I responded to a job advert in The Guardian which resulted in two years working with Radio Santa Cruz in Bolivia. On return to Northern Ireland I worked with the European Poverty3 programme before undertaking an MSc in community health at Trinity College Dublin. A career in academia beckoned initially with University College Dublin and since 2000 at Queen’s University Belfast. Opportunities have resulted in two sojourns in the policy arena: in 2000 I was invited to WHO Copenhagen to work on the Ministerial conference on nursing and public health and in 2001/2 was seconded to the Department of Health and Children in Dublin to lead the development of a national strategy on community nursing. I completed a Doctorate in Governance in 2007 and my thesis is a case study of public health governance in Cuba. I was appointed research manager with the Changing Ageing Partnership in June 2006.

4. What do you find is your biggest challenge in your current post?

Time, or rather the lack of time to do all that I would like to do.

5. What’s been the biggest change in ageing research since you started?

The challenge of the current economic situation.

6. What is the biggest change that you have contributed to, and in what way?

Providing opportunities for older people to become actively involved in the research process, from commissioning research to participating in the discussion of findings.

7. What do like best about your work?

The opportunities that it provides to meet and work with so many interesting people.

8. What do you like least about your work?

Having to spread myself so thinly – see answer to question four.

 9. How did you become interested in the BSG?

Through the embodiment interest group.

10. What benefits are useful for you as a BSG member?

BSG has acted as a great resource for me to be in contact with a wide range of people working in the field of ageing research. Over the last couple of years I have received great support, advice and guidance from BSG colleagues across the UK.

11. How do you think that the BSG could attract and retain more members?

BSG could perhaps attract and retain more members by creating local fora and by exploring opportunities to use technology to broadcast seminars and enable people to participate in workshops…

12. What do you want to achieve in your future career?

I have never planned my career. The journey so far has been challenging and interesting, never boring and has enabled me to contribute to exciting and worthwhile endeavours. It has also provided me with the opportunity to meet and work with some truly inspirational people. I will be happy if the rest of the journey continues in a similar vein.

13. Describe yourself in three words.

Optimistic, determined and resourceful.

14. What is your favourite city and why?

The old part of Venice. I love the light, the air, the sound of the canals and the magical way the atmosphere is constantly changing.

15. What is your favourite type of restaurant, and why?

Italian. Because Italian restaurants tend to be very relaxed and dining out is as much about the company and the chat as the food.

16. What are you listening to on your iPOD at the moment?

iPOD – you got to be joking I still listen to cassettes and Cds.

17. What are you reading at the moment?

Struggling with Don Quixote.

18. What is your favourite film, and why?

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It has comedy, romance, and tragedy, a fabulous soundtrack by Burt Bacharach and the magical pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford!

19. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

The best piece of advice I have ever heard “Time, my dear friend – time brings opportunity: opportunity is man’s martingale: the more one has shipped, the more one gains when he knows how to wait.” (Athos to d’Artagnan in the three Musketeers)

20. Who would you like to be stranded on a desert island with, and why?

Petr Skrabanek, he died the year before I went to Trinity College Dublin so unfortunately I only know him from other people’s reminiscences and of course from his wonderful books ‘follies and fallacies’ and ‘the rise of healthism and death of humane medicine.’

end of profile section