Alison is a clinician-researcher with expertise in speech and language therapy across community and inpatient settings, specialising in learning disability, autism, and mental health conditions. As an accredited autism diagnostician and former senior lecturer in speech and language therapy at De Montfort University, she hopes to bridge the gap between clinical practice and academic inquiry.
She completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Leicester (February 2024), employing a critical discursive psychology approach to examine communication between autistic patients and staff in mental health ward rounds.
Currently, Alison is a Research Associate in visual communication in medicine on the DECODE Project within the School of Design and Creative Arts, working alongside Professor Thomas Jun and Dr Eleanor Harvey. Additionally, she provides academic mentorship to clinicians undertaking practitioner-led quality improvement projects at Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust.
Alison has been a part of the DECODE Project since December 2022. DECODE is an NIHR funded project aiming to improve the healthcare of people with learning disabilities using AI prediction models. Her role is to work closely with the patient and carer partners in PPI and research participants to identify user needs for accessible health information and to cocreate communication resources.
Alison is also a collaborator on research with Leicester University on neurodiversity in the police. Her wider research interests are autism, mental health, discourse analytic approaches and qualitative methods.
Alison was a senior lecturer in Speech and Language Therapy at De Montfort University (2019-2022). She taught modules on adult learning disability, mental health, autism, research methods. She also supervised final year dissertation undergraduates and co-led a professional postgraduate module on Dysphagia.