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Staff Profile

Emily Hunter

Research Assistant, NIHR Innovation Observatory

  • Email: emily.hunter@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: 07930242914
  • Personal Website: https://io.nihr.ac.uk
  • Address: NIHR Innovation Observatory
    Room 3.12
    3 Science Square
    Newcastle Helix
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    United Kingdom
    NE4 5TG
Background

Role


Research Assistant, NIHR Innovation Observatory


Research


I’m a researcher specialising in mixed-methods, qualitative, and ethnographic approaches, with focus on research that reflects everyday lives, behaviours, and environments. Through understanding these experiences effectively, we can discover where health and research innovation is needed. My work is grounded in anthropology, particularly health and medical anthropology, which informs the sociocultural, medical, biological, and evolutionary perspectives that I believe are so key to real innovation!


I care about meaningful involvement, co-design, and connection, and developing engaging, creative, and accessible research with diverse communities and disciplines. I collaborate closely with community groups and partners to better understand their priorities and challenges. I’m also an advocate for interdisciplinary research, and spend a lot of my time working out effective ways to communicate and collaborate across disciplines and industries. My research research spans all ages, with lots of projects focusing on children, young people and families.


Main experience and skills -


- Mixed methods design

- Qualitative and ethnographic research

- Interdisciplinary collaboration

- Leading public involvement and engagement, particularly with community groups, and children, young people and families

- Co-design and participatory methods

- Design and delivery of cross-sector events

- Data analysis and insight generation

- Horizon scanning and future-focused research


Background


I have also completed an NIHR Pre-Doctoral Fellowship Award, in the methodology stream, hosted by Newcastle University's Population Health Sciences Institute. This has provided me with comprehensive training and experiences, and conducted a mixed methods study evaluating the acceptability, feasibility, and experiences of wearable technologies in children aged 0-36 months and their parents.


Previous work with Newcastle University has included working on the 'ActiveCHILD' study, investigating physical activity and movement in young children under 5 years and their families, as well as 'KERNEL' research group, a group committed to interdisciplinary, co-produced and creative methods to understand child - and therefore life-course - health.


My first degree was in Anthropology (Social, Biological and Evolutionary), and I chose to advance this with an MSc in Medical Anthropology. Previously, my research skills have been predominantly within qualitative research and ethnography, implementing in-depth and interpersonal methods, based on the premise that our perspectives, behaviours and actions are impacted by our cultural, social and physical environments.


About the NIHR Innovation Observatory


Home - NIHR Innovation Observatory

The NIHR Innovation Observatory is a world leading health and care innovation scanning centre providing data-driven insights to foster innovation and equitable access to high quality care. We aim to transform health systems and improve population health by providing advanced data-driven insights that foster innovation and equitable access to high quality care. At the core of our work is the development of data-driven methods to identify, capture and synthesise intelligence on new health innovations. We develop and share cutting edge methods in horizon scanning, building capacity in the systems across the public, voluntary and industry sectors.

 

We deliver essential intelligence and insights about medicines and MedTech innovation to the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), NHS England, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the NIHR, the UK Health Security Agency, the Department for Health and Social Care and industry - allowing these organisations to prepare for policies, regulation and frontline delivery for new, emerging and disruptive technologies.








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Publications