I am Professor of Psychology, with a Chair in the Psychology Department at Aberystwyth University. I am Director of Research for the Psychology Department and have recently been Acting Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Transfer for the Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences 2022-2023. My research involves applying community, and environmental psychology to understanding and improving connections between the built environment, getting out and about, and health and wellbeing. In particular I have expertise in environmental gerontology, examining relationships between environment and health in later stages of life, including older people’s road user safety, giving-up driving and creating age friendly neighbourhoods and communities. I have worked on 47 research projects as PI or Co-I totalling £25m research income. I am currently Principal Investigator and co-Director of two Welsh Government funded projects, the £3.1m Centre for Ageing and Dementia Research (CADR) project to bring together research in ageing with policy and practice across Wales and a £400k Transport and Health Integrated Research Network (THINK) to bring together those interested in health and transport research. I have authored 57 peer reviewed journal articles, 26 book chapters and have 5 books. I am also Co-Director the University Research Centre for Transport and Mobility (CeTrAM) at Aberystwyth University. I led the Centre for Innovative Ageing, a university department at Swansea University between 2019 and 2020.
I have been an Executive committee member of the British Society of Gerontology (BSG; 2015-20) and founder and co-lead the Special Interest Group at BSG on mobilities and transport in later life. I am also a member of the International Association of Applied Psychology and a board member of the Transport and Health Science Group and am a partner of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing. I am a Panel Reviewer for the Volkswagen Foundation, Hannover, Germany from 2022 and member of the steering group on One and Planetary Health for UKRI. My research has involved over 130 conference presentations, including 60 invited International and national presentations at conferences and I work closely with government, charities and third sector organisations and am keen on public engagement to get my research out into the real world. I am a member of the Welsh Government’s Ministerial Advisory Forum on Ageing, the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales’ Age Friendly Partnership Group, and Transport for Wales’ Disability Rights Taskforce: Working Group on Transport. I have presented at two British Science Festivals (2008 and 2016) and written many articles for the general public. I have appeared on BBC TV and international radio stations on a variety of ageing, mobility and built environment topics.