Care Home Research Forum

Geraldine Van Bueren is Emerita Professor at Queen Mary University of London, an Hon. Senior Fellow at BIICL, and a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford. A barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, she was appointed honorary Queen’s Counsel for her contributions to national and international law—one of fewer than ten women honorary silks at the time. She also held a human rights chair at the University of Cape Town and is a Bencher of the Middle Temple. A drafter of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, she also helped shape UN rules on juvenile justice, refugee children, and children in criminal justice. She has represented the UN in Iran, advised Japan and UNICEF, and worked internationally across Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. She received the Child Rights Lawyer Award and has served as a Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Her work has been profiled by The Guardian and she co-authored Know Your Rights with Angelina Jolie. She chairs the Alliance of Working Class Academics and has led projects for UNESCO on law and poverty, and with Age UK on a global treaty for older persons’ rights.

Zena Aldridge’s career in health and social care has spanned four decades, beginning in domiciliary care and as a nursing auxiliary in both acute and community settings. She qualified as a mental health nurse in 2003 and completed her master’s degree in 2013. More recently, she undertook a PhD with a thesis titled “Relationships, morality and emotion: Their impact and influence on nursing home staff decision-making when a resident with advanced dementia deteriorates.” Her specialist interests include the care of older people, dementia care, palliative and end of life care, continence management, and biopsychosocial care. Zena now holds a diverse portfolio of clinical and academic roles. She is NIHR Nursing and Midwifery Office Associate Director for Social Care, an NIHR Senior Clinical Practitioner Research Awardee (SCPRA), Regional Clinical Lead for dementia with NHS England, and an Independent Dementia Nurse Consultant. She also serves as Consultant Editor of Nursing Older People (RCNi).

Raphael Wittenberg is an Associate Professorial Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Care Policy and Evaluation Centre (CPEC) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Until 2024 he was also Deputy Director of the Centre for Health Service Economics and Organisation (CHSEO) at the University of Oxford. At CPEC, he leads a programme of research on financing long-term care, which aims to make projections of future demand for long-term care and associated expenditure. He also leads research on provision of unpaid care and attitudes to caring and modelling work for studies of dementia care.

Laura Shallcross is Professor of Public health and Director of the UCL Institute of Health Informatics.  She led the national VIVALDI (COVID-19 in care homes) study which informed the public health response to COVID-19 in care homes,  and was a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) Social Care working group. 

Kate Hamblin is Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Centre for Care. She joined the University of Sheffield in 2018 to work on the Sustainable Care programme. She also currently leads the Centre for Care’s Digital Care research theme and is the UK Networks and geographical lead for the North and East-Midlands in the IMProving Adult Care Together (IMPACT) evidence implementation Centre. She is also the Policy and Practice Liaison lead for the NIHR School for Social Care Research at the University of Sheffield. Her research has focused on technology and its role in the care of older people with complex needs.

Michelle Dyson worked as the Director General of Adult Social Care in the Department of Health and Social Care between September 2020 and July 2025. As the top civil servant leading on adult social care, she was responsible for advising Ministers on policy, for delivering reform into the adult social care system and for operational oversight of the adult social care system. Prior to this Michelle worked as a senior civil servant in different roles in the Ministry of Justice, Department for Work and Pensions and Department for Education, always with a focus on social policy/delivery particularly as regards disadvantaged groups. Michelle is a qualified solicitor and spent the first part of her Civil Service career as a government lawyer.

Dr Calisha Allen, MBChB MPH DFPH is a public health doctor and NIHR Doctoral Fellow at University College London. Her research interests focus on health literacy and numeracy and her focus is on improving the patient experience through taking health literate approaches to enhancing communication. Her previous research through the EPIC study has explored healthcare professionals’ perception of their patients’ health literacy and numeracy and she now works with a North London Trust to utilise those findings and support the trust take a health literate approach to care. Her current doctoral research looks into improving the handover of care from hospital to care homes by enhancing current discharge summaries to meet the needs of adult social care. Outside of research, Calisha has a strong interest in education and is a visiting lecturer in Public Health at the University of Hertfordshire and a National Ambassador for the Doubleday Centre for Patient Experience, a centre aimed at improving the patient experience by enhancing medical education.

Keziah Florin-Sefton worked as an Engagement Lead at Hammerson House from 2022 to 2024 after completing a BSc in Social Anthropology and Politics at the University of Cambridge. In 2022, she was awarded the NIHR Pre-Doctoral Fellowship with Nightingale Hammerson as the Host Organization. As part of this fellowship, she has completed an MSc in Social Research Methods at the London School of Economics with a focus on care home research. Her current research focuses on relationship-centred care and care home staff’s experiences of grief.

Arielle Rostant’s love for supporting positive and fulfilling relationships has led her from being a teacher, to training as a Drama and Movement Therapist to, since 2021, working in Nightingale Hammerson. Currently completing a MSc at UCL in Clinical Mental Health, with a speciality in Dementia, her research focuses on the relationships between residents with varying care needs and the resulting impact on psychosocial wellbeing. Arielle hopes that her work can support older people to continue living engaged and fulfilling lives no matter their care needs.