Thomas O'Toole

I am currently a postdoctoral research associate on the data integration research strand of the Survey Futures project, investigating how non-survey data (for example geospatial, adminsitrative and digital trace) can be used to supplement survey data to improve data quality.

Alongside my methodological research, I'm interested in how the social enviroment “gets under the skin” to influence changes in health across the lifecourse. In my doctoral thesis, I explored the relationships between job quality and allostatic load, using structural equation modelling in data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and UK Household Longitudinal Study.

I graduated with a BSc in Psychology from the University of Huddersfield, winning the Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarship and a funded MSc by Research. My MSc research project was an exploration of compassion fatigue in student nurses, using interpretative phenomenological analysis and survey methods. I recently completed my PhD candidacy in the ESRC and BBSRC funded Soc-B Centre for Doctoral Training in Biosocial Research at the University of Manchester, which emphasises interdisciplinary research, with a shared cohort across University College London and The University of Essex.

I am currently an ECR executive committee member for the Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies (SLLS), and I am involved with a project aiming to chart recent developments in social-biological research. In addition, I am also a honorary research officer on the Community Action on Respiratory Infections Cymru (CARI Cymru) Study, charting the social-to-biological interactions between respiratory infections and health behaviours.