Dr Knipe is a mental health epidemiologist with an interest in life course risk factors for suicide and self-harm. Her work has explored the social determinants of mental ill health and has looked at the impact of national policies in reducing suicide deaths. Her work has primarily been in low and middle income countries. She has received two awards by the International Association for Suicide Prevention, the Andrej Marusic and De Leo Fund award for her suicide prevention work. 

Dr Knipe was funded on a Wellcome Trust doctoral fellowship to investigate the socioeconomic risk factors for suicidal behaviour in Sri Lanka at the University of Bristol. Her current work continues her work on the Wellcome trust funded large randomised controlled trial into the 'Safer Storage' of pesticides as a means of suicide prevention. 

She was awarded an ESRC fellowship to help translate her research findings into policy and practice, and subsequently secured an Elizabeth Blackwell Institute Vice Chancellor's research fellowship to investigate ethnicity, migration and mental health. She has also received MRC pathfinder funding to explore the association between childhood adversity, domestic violence and self-harm in Sri Lanka.  

Her background prior to starting her doctoral studies was in pathology and microbiology and public health