Dr Finola Ferry is a Research Associate in the Hub, based at the University of Ulster’s Bamford Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing. Finola graduated with BSc (Hons) in Economics and Business Economics from Queen’s University Belfast (2004) and achieved her Doctorate at the University of Ulster (UU) in 2012, on the economic burden of mood and anxiety disorders. She has previously held an Assistant Statistician post at the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency and research posts at UU. Her primary area of expertise is in psychological trauma/PTSD and she works closely with the World Mental Health Survey Initiative, specifically on the Northern Ireland Study of Health and Stress (NISHS). Finola's other key area of interest is in health economics, particularly economic evaluation in mental health. In addition, Finola has been involved in a number of multi-disciplinary projects with researchers from UU, Trinity College Dublin, the Commission for Victims and Survivors NI and the Clinical Translational Research and Innovation Centre.
 
Dr Lisa Maguire is a Research Fellow in the Hub, at Queen’s University Belfast. She is a psychologist with a quantitative background and expertise in coordinating data collection and management across several large-scale cluster randomised trials. Her substantive research interests include socio-emotional health and well-being, literacy, and evaluation research. Her experience of conducting and supervising research projects spans randomised trials, process evaluations and large scale surveys. Lisa has previously worked as a researcher in Randomised Control Trials and Evaluation Research as part of the QUB-wide Improving Children’s Lives initiative. She has considerable experience in managing and coordinating the day-to-day running of school-based surveys and intervention evaluations. Along with colleagues, Lisa has been successful in obtaining a large-scale NIHR research grant to evaluate a socio-emotional learning programme in primary school children using a cluster randomised trial design over a four year period. She also has extensive theoretical knowledge and practical experience in the use, administration and analysis of attitudinal and attainment measures for children and young people. As part of her practical research experience she has gained wide expertise in working successfully with and building positive relationships with children and young people, parents, teachers and funders.

Dr Gillian W. Shorter (née Smith) is a Lecturer in Population and Clinical Trial Methodology in the Bamford Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing and works in the Hub at the University of Ulster. Following her PhD completed in 2009, Gillian has pursued a career researching patterns and health correlates of the use of alcohol, drugs, or other behaviours of addictive potential such as gambling using a range of epidemiological or quantitative methodologies. She also works on issues to improve measurement in clinical trials and population surveys. Gillian already works with a wide range of collaborators including researchers from Canada, Sweden, Australia, Denmark and elsewhere in the UK.

Professor Mike Clarke is the Director of the Hub, based in the Centre for Public Health at Queen’s University Belfast and current Chair of the Network of Hubs. He has worked for more than two decades on rigorous assessments of the effects of health care and other interventions and actions. He is the former Director of the UK Cochrane Centre, which is part of The Cochrane Collaboration, a global effort to prepare summaries of the effects of health interventions and is Co-ordinating Editor of the Cochrane Methodology Review Group, which prepares and maintains systematic reviews relevant to the methods of randomised trials, reviews and other evaluations of interventions, actions and strategies. He has worked on more than 30 systematic reviews in a wide range of areas, including healthcare interventions, survey design, publication bias, and civil service pay in resource poor settings; and been actively involved in some of the largest ever randomised trials in areas as varied as maternity care, breast cancer, poisoning and stroke. Mike is one of the founders of Evidence Aid, which is improving access to reliable information of relevance to people involved in disaster risk reduction, planning, response and recovery.