Dr Susie Weller BSc, PhD
Senior Research Fellow
Dr Susie Weller is a Senior Research Fellow in the Clinical Ethics and Law (CELS) research group in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton. Since 2000, she has been conducting qualitative research with children and families across a range of publicly funded, high profile studies.
As a social scientist, I am excited at the prospect of having the opportunity to apply my expertise in qualitative longitudinal research to understand ethical preparedness and the implications of rapidly advancing genomic technology on families and healthcare professionals.
Susie has a background in social geography and sociology and expertise in youth and family research, particularly creative, participatory and qualitative longitudinal (QLR) approaches. Throughout her career, she has worked at the interface between theoretical advances in family and youth research, and applied research that has policy and practice relevance. Much of this work has been in inter- and multidisciplinary teams straddling different social science disciplines, and the social and biomedical sciences.
Susie is currently working on a Wellcome Trust funded project exploring ethical preparedness in genomic medicine (EPPiGen) and is co-developing a QLR study of healthcare professionals’ and patients’ experiences of genetic medicine. She has recently applied her expertise to the international Transforming Adolescent Lives Through Nutrition (TALENT) collaboration to develop new knowledge on adolescent nutrition in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (GCRF, 2017-19).
Her previous research included a novel study of the impact on carers of a long-term childhood health condition (NIHR HTA, 2015-17) and an analysis of qualitative data to understand how doctor-patient communication about cancer can be improved (Cancer Research UK, 2019). She has applied her own innovative forms of analysis to study care and intimacy across the lifecourse (ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, 2015-19). Her post-doctoral work comprised a 12-year study of young people’s trajectories to adulthood in the UK (2003-15).
Susie has a growing international reputation for QLR and applied family research. She has made a significant contribution to methodological advances in QLR data collection, analysis and ethical research practice in data sharing. She was the Principal Investigator of a prestigious Methodological Innovation Project (NCRM, 2013-15), after which she worked in the National Centre for Research Methods where, with colleagues, she pioneered a new breadth-and-depth method for large-scale qualitative analysis (NCRM, 2015-19) and co-founded the Big Qual Analysis Resource Hub (http://bigqlr.ncrm.ac.uk/).
She has published over 55 papers and has built capacity in qualitative and qualitative longitudinal research delivering over 50 training events, including to biomedical scientists in LMICs. She has worked with cultural industries, policy-makers, practitioners and charities.