Nina Fudge

Ethnography; stroke; patient and public involvement in research; translational research.

• Stroke as a long-term condition
• Ethnographic approaches in applied health research
• Concepts and practices of citizen and patient participation in health systems, health research and research implementation.
• Health social movement theory and biological citizenship as applied to concepts and practices of citizen engagement
• Translational research

I joined KCL in 2005 as a research associate and have worked on a range of projects investigating patient and public involvement, the long-term needs of stroke survivors, and the role of patients in research implementation.

Prior to joining KCL, I completed a MSc in Environmental Epidemiology and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and worked at University College London and the National Institutes for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands in a variety of fields including HIV/AIDS and sexual health, environmental health, and the interface between science and policy.

Whilst working at KCL I undertook a PhD using an ethnographic approach to explore the participation of stroke survivors in stroke research and service development. My fieldwork was carried out in Lambeth and Southwark and I drew on Lukes’ three-dimensional view of power, embodied health movement theory, and biological citizenship to consider the implicit claims within user involvement policy that involving the public in the work of professionals will lead to patient empowerment, creation of new forms of knowledge and a transformation of unequal relations between patients and professionals.

As part of my role as participant observer for my doctoral research, together with Dr Chris McKevitt I set up the KCL Stroke Research Patients and Family Group http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/medicine/research/hscr/sections/stroke/patients.html. This brings together stroke researchers from King’s College London and people who have had a stroke and their family members who take part in the research. The group continues to meet on a 6 weekly basis. I am also involved in the production of Forward, a biannual research newsletter for participants in the South London Stroke Register.

Since completing my PhD, I am now funded by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at Guys and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London to explore translational research from a social science perspective. I teach on a number of seminars within modules for the Masters of Public Health (Sociology of Health and Illness; Social Research Methods; Patient and Public Involvement in Research).