Qualitative methods; visual methods; user led research in mental health; conceptualisations of patient experience; labour relations and research ecologies; history and definitions of patient and public involvement in health research; self management interventions

Dr Stan Papoulias is a Research Fellow in Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) and Deputy Lead of the PPI Research Theme at the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London. Stan trained and worked as a lecturer in Cultural Studies for many years, with an interest in how we think about memory and emotion on both an individual and a collective level. However, cuts in Arts and Humanities funding, increased workloads and deteriorating working conditions contributed to Stan’s mental ill health and led them to leave their job and career. Since they came to the Service User Research Enterprise (SURE) in 2012, they have been involved in a number of projects, including using photography to elicit felt experiences of inpatient care (Design in Mind) and implementing user valued consent processes for participation in a research database (Consent for Contact). Since 2015 they have been funded by the NIHR to map and optimise patient and public involvement in research. They are currently undertaking an innovative multi-method participatory study on the labour of PPI leads/practitioners.  In their current work, Stan is working across health fields, but remains primarily interested in mental health and in the use of participatory and visual methods to understand service user experiences of services and treatments. They are keen to investigate how different methodologies may inform our understanding of ‘experience’ and more generally on what it means to attend to ‘experience’ as a legitimate form of knowledge.