Doctor Susie Weller

Susie Weller is a Senior Research Fellow in the Clinical Ethics, Law and Society research group. She is affiliated to the UK’s National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) and is an Honorary Researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. 

Susie is a social scientist and, for the past 20 years, her research interests have included: familial relationships; youth transitions; caring relations, identities, and practices; patient journeys; and the wider impacts of health conditions and interventions. Much of this research has been with children, youth, and families. 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 interdisciplinary teams straddling different social science disciplines, and the social and biomedical sciences.

Her current research focuses on the Ethical Preparedness in Genomic Medicine (EPPiGen) study; a Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award in Humanities and Social Sciences. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, the project explores the ethical and social challenges that arise for those living and working with genetic and genomic results, along with the perspectives of wider publics. Concurrently, she is a senior researcher on the YouthLife programme; and senior advisor on Bukhali, a study of women’s journeys to motherhood in Soweto, South Africa.

Her previous research included an international qualitative longitudinal study of teenagers in COVID-19 times (GCRF, 2020), an international collaboration focusing on adolescent nutrition in low- and middle-income countries (GCRF, 2017-19), a novel study of the impact on carers of a long-term childhood health condition (NIHR HTA, 2015-17), an analysis of qualitative data to understand how doctor-patient communication about cancer can be improved (Cancer Research UK, 2019), and a 12-year qualitative longitudinal study of transitions to adulthood (ESRC, 2003-2016).

Susie is a keen methodologist specialising in the use of qualitative methodologies, particularly creative, participatory and longitudinal approaches, as well as qualitative secondary analysis. She was the Principal Investigator of a National Centre for Research Methods project assessing the implications of using remote interview methods in qualitative work. With colleagues, she also developed a new breadth-and-depth method for large-scale qualitative analysis and co-founded the Big Qual Analysis Resource Hub.