Dr Dickinson's research is primarily concerned with diversity and inclusion in health care and education taking a contemporary and historical perspective with the aim of improving the delivery of health care and the patient and student experience.  His unique contributions overlap nursing, nursing home, nursing education and LGBTQ history. Dr Dickinson is a founding member of the Older People’s Understandings of Sexuality (OPUS) interdisciplinary research group, which was established in 2013 to investigate issues related to sexuality and intimacy in later life.   The group’s work aims to challenge perceptions of older people as necessarily “asexual,” and to better support them as potentially sexual and intimate citizens.   Dr Dickinson’s particular focus is on older LGBTQ people in nursing homes, whose sexuality/intimacy needs are often not recognised or met.  Having worked in this unique area of research for ten years, he has a strong national and international interdisciplinary reputation. His book, “Curing Queers,” won the 2015 Lavinia Dock Award for exemplary historical research from the American Association for the History of Nursing. It has been adopted into curricula at national and international universities. He has consulted numerous times for television dramas and documentaries that exposed harmful “gay cures;” placing this hitherto neglected subject onto national and international political agendas.

As well as diversity issues in health care, particularly LGBTQ issues, Tommy's other research interests include:

• Care homes

• Nursing education

Tommy is happy to discuss the supervision of projects on any of the above topics. 

Dr Dickinson is Head of the Department of Mental Health Nursing. He graduated from Bournemouth University as a Registered Nurse in 2001, and initially worked in clinical practice across the UK and Australia in two areas: nursing homes for older people and secure mental health.  

He moved into academia in 2006 and held lectureships at several universities before commencing at King’s College London in 2016. In 2017, he was awarded the prestigious endowed Talbott Visiting Professor of Nursing at the University of Virginia (UVA) in the USA, where he taught and conducted research in 2018. 

Dr Dickinson is a Fellow of the European Academy of Nursing Science and Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.  He is an Editorial Board member of the Journal of Nursing Education and an International Editorial Advisory Board member of the Journal of American Nurses Association - New York.

In 2013, he established a theatre company called Mad 'Ed Theatre. Mad ‘Ed Theatre aims to educate the public and challenge perceptions regarding mental health. The company writes, directs and produces its own original works and has secured external funding for four of its most recent critically recognised plays: https://www.madedtheatre.com