Occupational therapy PhD

 As an occupational therapy PhD student at Brighton, you will benefit from:

• a team of two or sometimes three supervisors (from both within and outside occupational therapy) and a range of developmental opportunities to help challenge and broaden their academic and professional thinking. desk space and access to a desktop PC.  
• access to a range of electronic resources via the university’s Online Library, as well as to the physical book and journal collections housed within the Aldrich Library and other campus libraries. 

PhD students are provided with supervisors (from both within and outside occupational therapy) and offered a range of developmental opportunities to help challenge and broaden their academic and professional thinking. They will have the opportunity to network with other doctoral students and staff across the university to share ideas and expertise. They will be supported with conference presentation preparation, with research planning and publication activities as well as grant applications. The School of Sport and Health Sciences has established links with clinicians and other academics at the University of Brighton and also invites doctoral students to attend doctoral discussion areas.

The profile of the area includes midwives, nurses, physiotherapists, podiatrists, occupational therapists, sports scientists and osteopaths. We also collaborate with staff from other parts of the university, eg. Brighton and Sussex Medical School and with departments in other universities together with clinicians and managers locally. Students are encouraged to meet for informal discussions and supportive activities and on an annual basis for research conference/celebrations. We value all personal input from researchers and those interested in becoming researchers, and those who are interested to find out more about research and share ideas and knowledge.

We welcome research related to any aspect of occupational therapy or occupational science. Staff have particular expertise and interest in:

• Transition from adolescence to adulthood for those living with cerebral palsy
• Occupational therapy in diverse settings
• The impact that technology has on the therapeutic environment within areas related to occupational therapy.
• The practice of embroidering in relation to health and well-being
• Occupational therapy with people with intellectual disabilities (learning disabilities), in particular those with complex needs/ profound intellectual and multiple disabilities.
• Supporting and enabling people with intellectual disabilities to engage in occupations and promoting occupational justice, in particular through improving the quality of support provided.
• Ethical means of involving those who may not have capacity as research participants in order that their needs may be researched and their support improved.
• Lived experiences of older lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people: issues of human occupation, exclusion, isolation and health and social care.
• Human occupation and older people
• Patients who have Medically Unexplained Symptoms (MUS) and their health care workers
• The psychosocial issues of physical illness and trauma
• HIV the self and human occupation
• Students with disabilities/dyslexia: practice placements and learning in higher education
• Occupational therapy practitioner research and practice innovation
• Diabetes the self and human occupation
• Having a disability and engaging in human occupation in public arenas
• Flow and occupational science
• Resilience
• Effectiveness of pedagogic approaches in occupational therapy education.

Dr Paul Boyle

Paul values public involvement in research and is interested to support rights-based research in: living with disability; user experiences of health, social care and education services; adolescent development and working with the family; disability, human rights and rehabilitation; understanding physical disability and mental health. He supervises Masters and doctoral students undertaking qualitative research and is particularly keen to support phenomenological research.

Dr Channine Clarke

Channine is an experienced research supervisor at both Masters and  Doctoral level. She has a particular interest in pedagogic research, including problem-based learning and practice education. She is known internationally for her research and publications on role-emerging placements and diverse practice and is interested in further research in these areas. 

As an occupational therapist, Channine is also interested in understanding the influence of occupations on health and well-being.

Channine is a qualitative researcher, with expertise in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. 

Dr David Haines

David’s PhD supervisory interests include occupational therapy and occupational science, particularly (though not exclusively) in relation to people with intellectual (learning) disabilities.  He is also interested in research related to ensuring high quality support and care of people with severe and profound intellectual disabilities and others with complex and high support needs. 

His primary expertise is in qualitative research with particular interests in action research and case study and ethnographic methodologies.  If relevant to his research interests and expertise, he would be very interested in supporting those wishing to undertake a PhD at Brighton with development of their research proposal.

David is exploring the potential of a PhD Studentship to take forward the evaluation of the clinical reasoning tool currently being developed (see Research Interests above).

David is currently supervising the following PhD students:

Esther Dark: More than calories? Exploring the meaning of food and eating for individuals with lived experience of anorexia. 

Elspeth Clark: Belonging and people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities

Denise Harris: Supervision practices in an English NHS organisation: Complexity and Paradox

He is also supporting Audrey Yong's PhD by publication related to home environment design for people with autism and intellectual disabilities.

Tara Sims

Tara is interested in supporting PhD studies which involve children and young people in reviewing or developing the healthcare services they receive and healthcare technologies they use. She has experience carrying out research with young people with limb difference, spinal cord injury and autism. She is particularly interested in participatory and emancipatory research.

For further supervisory staff including cross-disciplinary options, please visit research staff on our research website.