Honorary titles within the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing are conferred upon persons of appropriate distinction, other than members of staff, who have an on-going association with the University in the area of research. They are leaders in their field, and below is a list of our current Honorary Fellows.
Honorary Fellow in the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing
Discipline: Bone and body composition - Mechanical loading and endocrine influences on bone strength - DXA imaging methods Athlete Health - Concussion and sub-concussion - Bone and body comp - RED-S - Female Athlete Triad - Retired athlete health
Over 15 years experience in bone, body composition and medical imaging research. Leading and managing academic, clinical and industry research to successful completion, scientific writing, extensive peer reviewed publication record, developing teams, networks and partnerships, managing budgets, and leadership of committees and research groups.
Discipline: Injury epidemiology, Injury prevention, head impact biomechanics, mild traumatic brain injuries
Experience: Registered Comprehensive Nurse with 25 yrs experience in medical, surgical, orthopaedics, mental health, Emergency and now Clinical Nurse Specialist in Emergency Medicine. Retired serviceman from the Royal New Zealand Navy (1977-1987) and Royal New Zealand Nursing Corps (1995-2000). Awarded NZOSM, NZGSM(IO) and NZDSM(R) Medals. Recipient of Te Amorangi National Māori Academy Excellence Award, PhD New Investigator Award – AUT University and PhD Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences Award for translation of thesis to publication.
Research Overview: Focus on researching injuries in sports by investigating injury mechanisms at the amateur level of participation to identify possible injury reduction strategies, sports-related concussion assessment and management through to rehabilitation focusing on transferability of the research to non-sporting environments focusing on intimate partner violence and non-accidental injury.
Co-leader of the SPRINZ Rugby Codes Research Group, Honorary Research fellow at the School of Science & Technology; University of New England, Armidale. New South Wales. Australia and a Research Associate of the Sports Performance Research Institute of New Zealand (SPRINZ, AUT University).
Dr Frances Cole
MB.BS, MRCGP, Postgraduate Diploma CBT Newcastle
Frances Cole is a recently retired GP passionate about quality primary care and community management of persistent pain since in 1996. She gained a postgraduate diploma in CBT therapy in 1993-4 via Newcastle CBT centre & University of Durham and focused on delivering biopsychosocial approaches to persistent pain management.
In 1996 she and colleagues set up the first primary care based pain management programmes in Bradford, UK taking only referrals from GPs! Patient outcomes were crucial to see whether CBT based pain management programme approaches made a difference. The outcomes found people with pain had significantly less anxiety, depression, improved physical health and, most of all, their confidence to cope with their lives despite the pain had doubled.
Since then Frances has worked in pain rehabilitation services across Yorkshire and with collaboration with patients and clinicians both in primary and specialist care in the UK, created numerous pain management resources. She has co-created numerous books and other resources; for example Overcoming Chronic Pain – CBT self-help book, recommended by Reading Well Agency 2013 and 2017 and An introduction to Living Well with Pain, 2017. She commissioned Bob Lewin, Professor of Cardiac Rehabilitation, York University, to create The Pain Management Plan and collaborated with Pain Management programme services around the UK on its evaluation in NHS services use.
She helped develop and evaluate the community based Spinal Pain Management Services For Leeds Community Health Services 2011-2014.
Other roles included:
Clinical Leader for Chronic Pain NHS Kirklees 2009-2012 and co-created online resources for people with pain; www.myhealthtools.uk
Chair of British Pain Society Pain Management Programme Special Interest Group 2010-2012
Awards gained: National NHS Clinical Leadership Award in 2011 for pain work
AHSCN 2021 Bright Ideas Award for the Ten Footsteps training programmes within the Live Well With Pain resources part of the Gabapentinoid and Opioid Toolbox GOTT project supported by The Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing, University of Durham.
Balbir Singh
Artistic Director and CEO of Balbir Singh Dance Company
Balbir Singh is the Artistic Director and CEO of Balbir Singh Dance Company, founded in 2005. Prior to that he ran Diversity Dance Company. He trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Leeds, graduating in 1995.
Balbir Singh Dance Company, based in Leeds and working nationally and internationally, specialises in the creation and touring of new artistic works using classical Indian dance (Kathak) and contemporary dance. Balbir manages a team of contracted dance artists, producers and dance facilitators. He is a recognised leader at the forefront of intercultural dance practice in the UK. The repertoire includes over twenty productions; interactive theatrical walks; and community-based arts projects such as socially prescribed health and wellbeing walks and work in care homes. Balbir is developing a national Resilient Dancer programme as part of Arts Council England’s national portfolio. The Company has an award-winning cultural education programme regularly delivering in schools and colleges across the north of England.
Balbir conceived the ground-breaking Unmasking Pain project, exploring creative approaches to pain management through dance and other art forms. This is a partnership between BSDC, Durham University, Leeds Becket University, Live Well With Pain and is produced by Space 2 in Leeds. Unmasking Pain was the 2023 winner of the FUSE award for Innovation in Communication.
Previous career highlights include selection for Arts Council England’s Links scheme partnering NPOs with the Royal Opera House; iMove 2012 Cultural Olympiad Commission performance of Synchronised at Ponds Forge swimming pool and presenting work at festivals around the world including in Bilbao, Canada, Edinburgh, Germany, India and UAE. Current creative partners include Huddersfield Literature Festival, Hull Dance, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Thackray Medical Museum.
Dr Daniel Glassbrook
Discipline: Biomechanics – Concussion - Sports Science – Wearable Technology
Daniel is an experienced sport scientist with previous positions in Premiership Rugby in the UK, and the National Rugby League in Australia.
With a research foundation in biomechanics, Daniel’s research has focused on the use of wearable technology such as GPS and inertial measurement units to quantify and understand the running demands of professional rugby league match-play, so that this information could better inform practitioners and high-performance staff when making decisions around player load. More recently, Daniel's research has focused on the assessment, recording and management of brain health post-concussion, and general neurocognitive performance in athletes from a range of sports. This area of research has potential for generating large research impact due to ongoing societal concerns about athlete sub-concussive and mild traumatic brain injury head impacts, and the need to identify strategies to improve player welfare.
Ms Louise Trewern
She was prescribed opioid medication for back pain, which increased over a 13 year period to dangerously high levels, along with a cocktail of other drugs such as antidepressants and benzodiazepines. With support from her local pain service Louise reduced and eventually came off her opioids and learned to self-manage her pain in other ways. She considers that this process literally ‘saved her life.’
Louise today is a the Lead Lived Experience Trainer at Live Well With Pain & a very passionate patient-advocate, Immediate Past Vice Chairwoman of The British Pain Society’s Patient Voice Committee. She is on Executive Committee of The Physiotherapy Pain Association and Chair of the Get Involved – Evolving Through Patient Experience Committee at Torbay Hospital Pain Service, as well as numerous other projects including supporting and advising Live Well with Pain.
Ms Julie Ward
Julie was a Labour MEP for NW England from July 2014 to January 2020. She was vice chair of the culture and education committee and a member of the committees for women's rights and gender equality, regional development, and economic and monetary affairs. She co-founded a parliamentary intergroup on child rights and was co-president of the anti-racism and diversity intergroup. She served on the delegation for relations with Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo and was a member of the EU-African, Caribbean and Pacific joint parliamentary assembly. Julie is a strong advocate and supporter of our WRIHW Durham Arts-4-Health community Hub and our Unmasking Pain projects. (https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/news/health/living-well-with-pain/).
Prof. Dr. Thorsten Fögen
Northeast Normal University Changchun (Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations)
Thorsten Fögen has degrees in Classics (Ancient Greek & Latin) and General Linguistics. He specialises in Latin literature and culture from the late Republic (first century B.C.) until the early/middle Empire (first and second centuries A.D.), but he has also published on late antiquity and on Greek literature. Among other areas, his focus is on ancient technical texts, the history of science and scholarship, epistolography, epigram, satire, animals in antiquity, the history of linguistic ideas, literary criticism and rhetoric.
His published works include a book on Roman authors’ attitudes towards the Latin language, including the stereotype of the ‘poverty’ of Latin (‘Patrii sermonis egestas’: Einstellungen lateinischer Autoren zu ihrer Muttersprache, Munich & Leipzig 2000: Saur), as thematised in particular by Lucretius, Cicero, Quintilian, Aulus Gellius and late antique authors. He also wrote a comprehensive study on Roman technical writing, with a focus on Vitruvius, Columella, Pliny the Elder and Frontinus (Wissen, Kommunikation und Selbstdarstellung. Zur Struktur und Charakteristik römischer Fachtexte der frühen Kaiserzeit, Munich 2009: C. H. Beck).
He has edited eleven volumes, most recently Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (Berlin & Boston 2017: De Gruyter; ed. with Edmund Thomas), Letters and Communities: Studies in the Socio-Political Dimensions of Ancient Epistolography (Oxford 2018: Oxford University Press; ed. with Paola Ceccarelli, Lutz Doering & Ingo Gildenhard), and Brief und Epigramm: Bezüge und Wechselwirkungen zwischen zwei Textsorten in Antike und Mittelalter (Berlin & Boston 2023: De Gruyter; ed. with Nina Mindt). In addition, he has published 90 articles in journals and edited volumes, and 31 book reviews. Two edited volumes are about to be published: Portrayals of ‘Intellectuals’ in the Graeco-Roman World (Tübingen 2024: Mohr Siebeck) and Plinius der Jüngere aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive (Tübingen 2024: Mohr Siebeck).
At Durham, he is currently in charge of the WRIHW guest lecture series on "Health, Environment and Architecture: Discourses from the Past, Challenges for the Present, Perspectives for the Future"
Dr Laura Hissey
Dr Laura Hissey DHealthPsy, MSc, BSc. is a HCPC Registered Practitioner Psychologist who specialises in Pain Management, with over 15 years’ experience of working in specialist multidisciplinary pain teams in both primary and secondary care NHS pain services. She is the Lead Trainer for Live Well With Pain where she is responsible for leading the national roll out of The Ten Footsteps Training Programme to Health Care Professionals working in Pain Management.
She is the Psychology Lead for Pain Services at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust in the West Midlands. She provides clinical leadership for the psychology service within the department and works collaboratively with multidisciplinary and managerial colleagues to achieve effective, evidence based psychological service provision for people with long-term pain. Within her clinical practice, she provides highly specialist psychological assessment and interventions to support people to better understand and effectively self-manage a wide range of long-term pain conditions. Laura’s research interests include understanding pain beliefs and adjustment to chronic pain; as well as understanding the role of psychosocial factors in pain; and promoting the long-term maintenance of behaviour change.
Esteem factors: UHB Kind, Connected, Bold Award Winner: University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust: Awarded for consistent positive patient feedback from the Pain Management Programme
Parliamentary Pain Campaign Group (PPCG) Member: She represents Psychology in Pain Management nationally to advocate concise asks to the Government to improve the lives of patients living with chronic pain
Dr Jordan Mullard
Jordan is an interdisciplinary social scientist specialising in the qualitative study of intersectionality, race, marginality and health inequality. Her recent research as part of an NIHR funded project housed at Leeds University looks at long covid (LC) among marginalised communities and the impacts and barriers to quality of life and access to support. Her doctoral work examined identity-making and social mobility among Dalits in the Thar Desert of India during a period of environmental and economic crisis. She has recently completed a three-year ethnographic study (whilst holding academic positions in both the anthropology and sociology departments at Durham University) of emergent antiracism during the covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement in the North East. Intellectually Jordan is interested in theorising the impact of ‘crises’ be them social, environmental or health and unpacking the interrelations between inequality, culture and identity to explore newly emerging patterns of social transformation. Passionate about action in the world, Jordan also has an extensive community development, policy and consultancy background. She has recently co-founded an emerging organisation that links anti-racism work, community organising, and Black-led cultural and heritage organisations together in the North East. She is interested in exploring social prescribing and the role of nature, arts and cultural heritage community groups for creating wider belonging and reducing health inequities. Jordan is currently taking a position as Senior Research Associate in Newcastle University’s Population Health Sciences Institute where she will broker and lead research for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC), Newcastle University and the Health Determinants Research Collaboration in Gateshead Local Authority.
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