Academic Staff
Head of Lancaster Medical School
Professor Anne Garden took up post as Director of the Centre for Medical Education in April 2006 having previously been Head of the School of Medical Education at the University of Liverpool.
Anne graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1973 and after house jobs in Aberdeen and Stornoway, settled on a career in Obstetrics and Gynaecology gaining MRCOG in 1979 and FRCOG in 1992. She worked in Cape Town, South Africa and Toronto, Canada before taking up post as Senior Lecturer in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Liverpool in 1987. Whilst in Liverpool she developed an interest in Paediatric and Adolescent Gynaecology setting up a service for the sub-specialty based at Alder Hey Children's Hospital. She has written two books on the subject. She continues her clinical work in Paediatric and Adolescent Gynaecology at Alder Hey and also at the Royal Lancaster infirmary - as well as carrying out clinical duties at Furness General Hospital.
Her interest in Medical Education began in 1996, becoming Director of Medical Studies at Liverpool in 2001. One of her main areas of interest is Quality Assurance in Medical Education, having served as a QAA Subject Specialist Reviewer for Medicine from 1998 to 2001. She is now one of the Team Leaders for the GMC's QABME (Quality Assurance in Basic Medical Education) programme and a member of Council of the newly formed Academy of Medical Educators.
Her main interest in Medical Education is in Professionalism in Medical Education having led the successful bid for a Centre for Excellence for Learning and Teaching for Developing Professionalism while at Liverpool.
Please direct initial enquiries to Helena Moore
a.garden@lancaster.ac.uk
Director, Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre
Professor Colin Ockleford is Director of the Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre, a former member of Council of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland and a Member of the Education Committee of the International Federation of Anatomical Associations. He is Chair of the Departmental Research Committee and a member of the ministerial Advisory Committee on Pesticides, DEFRA.
He is also a Visiting Professor and Head of the Laboratory for Developmental Cell Sciences at Leicester University. His research work on Reproductive Immunopathology has led to the award of the Symington Prize, Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists and a D.Sc. from St Andrews University. He is currently a partner in the European Molecular Biology of Implantation Consortium (EMBIC) a network of excellence funded by the EU.
Please direct initial enquiries to Lisa Dainty
c.ockleford@lancaster.ac.uk
CHICAS Group Leader
Professor Peter Diggle's research concerns the development and application of statistical methods relevant to the biomedical and health sciences. Current methodological themes include: geostatistical analysis; spatial and spatio-temporal point processes; joint modelling of repeated measurement and time-to-event outcomes in longitudinal studies. Current areas of application include: real-time disease surveillance; environmental exposure measurement; tropical disease prevalence mapping; early diagnosis of primary renal disease; short-term forecasting of meningitis epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa.
In addition to his substantive post in Lancaster Medical School, Prof Diggle is an Adjunct Professor of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, Adjunct Senior Researcher at Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Professor in the University of Liverpool's Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, a trustee for the Biometrika Trust, founding co-editor and member of the Advisory Board for the journal Biostatistics, Chair of the Medical Research Council's Strategic Skills Fellowships Schemes panel and a former member of the Medical Research Council's Population and Systems Medicine Board.
Please direct initial enquiries to Cathy Thomson.
p.diggle@lancaster.ac.uk
Professor of Musculoskeletal Science
Professor John Goodacre is the lead for Postgraduate Medicine in the Faculty of Health of Medicine, and Clinical Director of the NIHR Comprehensive Local Research Network for Cumbria & Lancashire. He is also lead convenor of the Cumbria & Lancashire Musculoskeletal Specialty Group, and Honorary Consultant in Rheumatology at the Blackpool, Fylde & Wyre NHS Foundation Trust. He is a member of the Medical Research Council (MRC) College of Experts, a member of EU Framework Programme research review panels, and UK advisor to the Government of Bulgaria on its national strategy for biomedical science and clinical research. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.
Director of Medical Studies
Dr Gill Vince has been appointed Director of Medical Studies for the Cumbria and Lancashire Medical and Dental Consortium, and is the degree director for the MBChB at Lancaster. Dr Vince was previously Admissions Director and Lecturer in Immunology at the Faculty of Medical Education at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests are in the field of reproductive immunology.
Director of MBChB Years 1 and 2
Dr Howard Lindsay joined the Centre for Medical Education in October 2006 from Sussex University where he was a Lecturer and group leader in the Genome Damage and Stability Centre. At Lancaster he is Director of Year 1 and 2.
Howard's research focuses on the control of the cell cycle and the cellular responses to DNA damage. He will combine his work for CME with his research as part of the Biomedical Research Unit within the School of Biological Sciences.
Director of Problem Based Learning
Dr Dawn Goodwin joined the Centre for Medical Education in October 2006, having previously been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Institute for Health Research at Lancaster. Dr Goodwin will divide her time between duties in the CME and continued research with the Institute and NHS colleagues into the sociology of health and illness.
Deputy Director of Medical Studies and Director of Admissions
Dr Karen Grant joined the Lancaster Medical School in January 2007 from Keele University. She assists Dr Vince (Director of Medical Studies) in the delivery of the MBChB programme at Lancaster and is responsible for curriculum review and development. Dr Grant is also responsible for Admissions onto the MBChB programme and Widening Participation initiatives.
Dr Grant initially studied Pharmacy, graduating in 1988 from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. She subsequently moved into academic research, completing her PhD in 1993, then working at the prestigious Wellcome Trust Centre for Molecular Parasitology at the University of Glasgow for 10 years. Her research focussed on the protozoan parasites, Leishmania and Trypanosoma brucei, with overlapping interests in cell cycle control, protein kinase biochemistry and novel drug target identification and validation.
In 2004, Dr Grant moved to Keele University School of Medicine as a Lecturer in Biomedical Sciences, where she taught on the medical degree programme and pursued her research within the School of Life Sciences.
Dr Grant is now actively pursuing research in medical education with an emphasis on evidence-based admissions procedures and how theories of learning apply in a medical education context.
Director of Special Study Modules
Dr Maggie Mort is Reader in the Sociology of Science, Technology & Medicine and hold a joint post in Medicine and Sociology. She has extensive experience in international interdisciplinary research projects including coordination of the EC FP7 Collaborative Research project: Ethical Frameworks for Telecare Technologies for older people at home (EFORTT). She offers Special Study Modules on patient safety, disasters and lectures on medical uncertainty. In Sociology she is Doctoral Director and supervises students in studies of new health technologies, human machine relations in healthcare and disaster recovery. She has published widely from ethnographic research in health, medicine and the implementation of new technologies.
Lecturer in Epidemiology
Dr Tom Keegan joined Lancaster Medical School as lecturer in epidemiology in August 2009. Before then he had worked as a researcher at the University of Oxford; on a historical cohort study of the military veterans who participated in human experiments at Porton Down between 1939 and 1989, and on environmental exposures and risk of childhood cancer.
At Lancaster, his research will continue to work in environmental and occupation epidemiology, with an interest in exposure measurement and modelling.
Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Dr Tom Fanshawe took up a lectureship in CHICAS in July 2009. Previously he worked as a medical statistician in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge before arriving at Lancaster in 2006.
In his current post he provides statistical input on both design and analysis for a range of research proposals developed through the NHS Research Design Service North West.
His other methodological research interests include spatio-temporal methods for environmental epidemiology and multivariate modelling in geostatistics.
Clinical Lecturer in Medical Education
Dr Rachel Isba joined Lancaster Medical School in September 2010 as a Clinical Lecturer in Medical Education. She is also a public health and emergency medicine doctor having graduated from Oxford University Medical School in 2003. Her broad research interests are in the hidden aspects of the medical curriculum - including the role of learning environments and social networks in undergraduate medical education.
Lecturer in Medical Education
Dr Fiona Curtis is a Lecturer in Medical Education and Co-director for Year 2 of the undergraduate medical degree (MBChB). Fiona joined Lancaster Medical School in April 2011, having previously been the Learning Resources Manager in the School of Medicine and Health at Durham University. Her main research interest is e-Learning in Medical Education.
Fiona's full profile
Lecturer in Medical Ethics
Dr Laura Machin came to Lancaster May 2011 after acting as a research fellow on projects exploring the political and moral economy of cord blood banking, and the implications for the NHS of inward and outward medical tourism at the University of York.
She sits on the Faculty Research Ethics Committee, and is Co-Director of Year 3. Laura's teaching draws on her long-standing research interests in the social and ethical aspects of reproductive medicine and donation of body parts, blood and tissue. At Lancaster, Laura will expand her research interests to include transplantation, as well as explore new areas around military medical ethics and mental health.
Laura has planned a number of activities to contribute to the profile of medical ethics at Lancaster, including a Staff Seminar Series based at the local hospital and a Student Debating Series.
Laura is also the Co-Convenor for the British Sociological Association Human Reproduction Study Group, a long term member of the Association for Improvement in Maternity Services, and a committee member of Lancaster University Human Rights Group.
Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Anna Hart is a chartered statistician with a strong commitment to knowledge transfer and collaborative research in healthcare. She is currently on the Professional Affairs Committee of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) and served on its council between 2008 and 2012. She has been an examiner for the RSS examinations for more than 10 years. Before coming to Lancaster she taught statistics and research methods across a range of courses.
Anna is involved in several collaborative clinical trials and epidemiological studies in the north-west, and also provides statistical support for the Clinical Research Hub. She is on the editorial board of Maternal and Child Nutrition.
Director of Student Support
Dr Elaine Taylor joined Lancaster Medical School in October 2011 as a lecturer in Medical Education and Director of Student Support. Dr Taylor combines her role in the Medical School with her research within Biomedical and Life Sciences. Her research interests relate to the cellular mechanisms which safeguard genome integrity, helping to prevent the development of cancer and other genome instability-related disorders such as neurodegeneration and premature ageing.
Lecturer in Anatomy
Dr Adam Taylor joined Lancaster Medical School in October 2011 as a Lecturer in Anatomy. Adam currently teaches anatomy to the cohort of Lancaster medical students, located in the state-of-the-art Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre. His research interests are in the turnover and maintenance of bone and cartilage, the implications that exercise has on these tissues and the pathologies associated with bone and cartilage; particularly Osteoarthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoporosis. Adam is a keen member of the Bone Research Society, Osteoarthritis Research Society International, the Anatomical Society and the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
Director of Communication Skills
Dr Martin Armer is Director of Communication Skills and was appointed in January 2012. He graduated in 1996, amd during his training has worked in numerous fields within medicine including Accident and Emergency Medicine, Anaesthetics and Intensive Care Medicine, Paediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, General Surgery and Elderly Care. He has worked on communication issues with "Doctors in difficulty", and GP Registrars (as they used to be called). He is a GP in Cumbria and has been involved in communication teaching at Lancaster since 2009.
He is passionate about improving communication between medical students and doctors and their patients. His interests cover all aspects of this, especially linking communication into clinical teaching in the later years of undergraduate medical education. His aim is to foster a culture across all clinical specialities where effective communication is embedded as a fundamental part of a clinician's skills.
Lead Clinical Community Teacher
Dr Euan Lawson has been working at Lancaster Medical School since the first cohort arrived in 2006. He is now the lead Community Clinical Teacher and is involved in all aspects of delivering the community clinical course.
He graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1997 and went off with the British Army on a short-service commission. He completed his GP training within the Army. He has spent time in Germany, inluding a tour of Bosnia, before finally fetching up in Brunei with the Gurkhas. In 2004 he left the Army and moved to the north west of England. As well as continuing with some 'normal' general practice his main clinical interest is the management of substance misuse in primary care.