Key information from profile summary:

• Researcher supported by a fellowship awarded by the National Institute for Health & Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration South West Peninsula (PenARC) and Alzheimer’s Society.
• Currently working on person-centred dementia care, with a focus on planning for the future (advance care planning) to enable living and dying well
• International experience in university leadership roles, teaching, supervision
• Experience in different research methods gained from working on a range of research projects
• Developing interest/expertise in realist health economic evaluation; global health; citizen science and AI in health and social care

I am an applied dementia researcher and NIHR Dementia Capacity Building Research Fellow, whose work is focussed on how to achieve person-centred care for people living with dementia and their carers.  As an academic I have a range of international experience in university leadership roles, teaching and supervision.   

Since my PhD I have led and/or worked as part of various research projects employing different research methods and approaches.  For example, my early research sought to understand the interaction between typical and atypical language/communication, cognition and the brain in people with schizophrenia (those with and without the symptom of formal thought disorder).  This work later expanded to include bilingualism – motivated in part by moving from England after my PhD back to Malaysia and then Singapore, where almost everyone is at least bilingual.  Methods employed in this research included analysing spoken language, cognitive neuropsycholgical assessments of comprehension and cognition, experimental design and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

My current research is related to person-centred dementia care.  Since 2019 I have been programme lead and a researcher on the D-PACT (Dementia PersonAlised Care Team) project.  This programme of research (2018-2024) was funded by the NIHR to develop and evaluate an intervention comprising a dementia support worker based in primary care.  Via D-PACT I gained experience in (i) managing a large programme of research; (ii) developing and enhancing ways of including people with dementia – including those who lack cognitive capacity and those from under-served communities – in all aspects of the research process; and (iii) employing a realist, mixed-methods approach to evaluation as an alternative method to the randomised controlled trial, including realist economic evaluation.   

As part of my current NIHR fellowship I am examining advance care planning, particularly for conditions like dementia where trajectory is uncertain.  Multiple long-term conditions, affecting about three quarters of people living with dementia, add to this complexity and uncertainty.  Advance care planning plays a role in promoting person-centred and integrated care; however questions remain around who, how and in what contexts this happens, well as the economic implications of advance care planning.  Both are also methodologically challenging to measure and interpret.  For the next 18 months (starting October 2024) I will be investigating the impact of uncertainty (prognosis/trajectories + multiple long-term conditions) when planning for the future. 

Alongside this work I have a developing interest in the use of citizen science and AI in health and social care.  I am also keen to understand how different global health and social care contexts influence the delivery of person-centred dementia care and am working with colleagues in Malaysia as part of this. 

Member, NIHR Academy Member Voices Group (July 2024 to present)

Lay member, HRA Cornwall & Plymouth Research Ethics Committee (2020 to present)

2021 cohort, Foundation Future Leaders Programme (Foundation for Science and Technology)

Previous

• Lim Li Koon, Reading processes in biscriptal children in Singapore
• Masnidah Masnawi, Imageability and verb-noun naming in Aphasia: Can the effect of grammatical class be reduced to differences in imageability?
• Philina Ng, Fusiform gyrus: Investigation of visual word recognition in the bilingual brain
• Seng Su Lin, Bilingual language control and switching

Current

• Waine, H. Functional grammatical development in children with Developmental Language Disorder

I am a founding member of RIPELS (Researchers in Palliative and End of Life Support) at Plymouth.

Previous universities worked at

• Plymouth Marjon University (Jan 2016 - May 2019)
• National University of Singapore (May 2002 - Dec 2015)
• Universiti Sains Malaysia (July 1999 - Apr 2002)

Previous roles

• Associate Dean for Research (Plymouth Marjon University)
• Head of Department (English & Language Sciences, Plymouth Marjon Unversity)
• Chair of University Research Ethics (Plymouth Marjon University)
• Graduate Chair (Department of English Language & Literature, National University of Singaopre)
• Chair of Department Research Ethics (Department of English Language & Literature, National University of Singapore)