Sarah is a Senior Research Fellow based in Bristol Medical School and Social Science Lead in the newly funded NIHR Global Health and Ageing Research Unit. She is a sociologist by background who uses qualitative research methods in applied health research. Research interests include service delivery, treatment seeking behaviour, patient experiences of long term conditions. She has a particular interest in using theoretical frameworks to design and evaluate complex interventions. She has experience of these both within the NHS and in Southern Africa. 

Sarah has leadership and oversight of the qualitative component of several international studies. This includes Co-Lead for the ethnographic component of mixed methods study to understand and characterise fracture care in sub-Saharan Africa (FRACTURES-E3), funded by the Wellcome Trust. This is a collaboration with researchers across South Africa, The Gambia and Zimbabwe. She is also Ethnography Lead on the newly funded NIHR Global Health Group on Musculoskeletal Injuries being carried out across Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa, led by the University of Oxford. Recently, she also led a project as Principal Investigator to co-produce contextually relevant information resources on the menopause for women in Zimbabwe and South Africa, in collaboration with clinical stakeholders and non-governmental organisations. Resources have been translated into several Africa languages and endorsed by the Ministry of Health and Child Care in Zimbabwe and the South African Menopause Society (SAMS). She currently supervises three PhD students: 1) Perceptions of ageing in South Africa, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2) Co-developing an intervention for healthcare professionals to support menopausal women in Zimbabwe, University of Bristol and 3) Clinical outcomes and lived experiences of gunshot injuries in South Africa, University of Oxford.

One of her main roles is preparing bids for funding and she is Principal Investigator and Co-applicant on qualitative and multi-disciplinary research studies. The total value of her grants to date ~ £5.1m. Among the grants on which Sarah has been a principal or co-applicant include those from the UK’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), Versus Arthritis, the Royal Osteoporosis Society and the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). 

Sarah is committed to promoting open and transparent qualitative research and is a UK Reproducibility Network accredited trainer. In recognition of this work, she received a University of Bristol Research Culture commendation for work to enhance Open Research engagement (2025).

Sarah completed her DPhil (PhD) at the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford. This explored the organisation and delivery of clubfoot treatment services in Malawi using ethnographic research methods. 

Methodological expertise includes ethnography, semi-structured interviews, focus groups and case studies. Qualitative analysis techniques are thematic analysis, framework approach, grounded theory and abductive analyses. She also has experience in using established techniques to conduct systematic syntheses of existing qualitative research.