Laura Sheard

[email protected]

I am a qualitative methodologist, implementation scientist and health sociologist, with over twenty years’ experience of leading mixed methods evaluations in applied health research.

My research portfolio lies at the intersection of health inequalities and healthcare improvement and my primary topic interests are: prison healthcare, food insecurity, quality/safety/experience of care.

Methodologically, I am interested in innovation and novelty in qualitative analytic techniques and the role of interpretative analysis in health research. I am the creator of the pen portrait technique and author of a 2022 paper about the importance of interpretation in qualitative analysis.

I am associate editor at the journal Implementation Science, where I mostly handle qualitative submissions.

My 2025 h-index is 32 and I have published over 60 peer reviewed journal articles.

In the last 10 years, I have generated £28m total grant income across 14 grants and I have been principal investigator on three grants (£1.7m) including the Qual-P study about improving prison healthcare.

In 2025, I am providing my qualitative expertise to the following studies:

Fair Food Futures UK (Principal investigator)

Qualitative co-applicant and work-package lead:

AMICABLE , OPTIM-I, Response, SASI-Med

Previously, I was Associate Professor in Health Sciences at University of York (2019-2024) and Principal Research Fellow at Bradford Institute for Health Research (2012-2019). Between 2003 and 2011, I worked in university and NHS research roles alongside undertaking both my social research masters (2003-2005) and sociology PhD (2006-2010) at University in Leeds. My undergrad was at University of Bradford (1999-2002).