Dr John Ratcliffe

Profile

I joined the University of Leeds in 2025 as a research fellow in the School of Healthcare, working primarily in the school of social care and with Nurturing Innovation in Care Home Excellence in Leeds (NICHE-Leeds). My role is to work on the MEND study, assist with research methodologies, and build a research portflio focused on tackling loneliness. 

Prior to joining Leeds I worked at King’s College London on the DELONELINESS project. This aimed to build a smart monitoring system able to detect loneliness in older adults and promote personalised responses. Previously, I worked at Sheffield Hallam University, where I worked as a researcher in the Centre for Loneliness Studies, on a project evaluating the Commonwealth Active Communities for Sport England; and as a lecturer in reseach methods. I have also worked at the University of Sheffield as a researcher and the University of York as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. I attained my PhD in Health Sciences from the University of York for a study of men, masculinities, and Loneliness in 2022.

Research interests

My passion is to conduct rigorous research and find ways to promote better mental health and wellbeing. My past research has focused on loneliness, and I have published extensively on how we can rethink loneliness, with a view to how policy and and practice can be adapted to reduce suffering. 

In my PhD, I conducted a mixed-methods study of men and loneliness, and found evidence that men’s constructions and experiences of loneliness were not effectively encapsulated by common definitions of loneliness, resulting in ineffective interventions or simply being missed entirely. At King’s College London, I was involved in a study using a health monitoring watch to investigate whether loneliness is associated with biomarkers, qualitative work to understand what older adults would want from a smart monitoring system to detect loneliness, and conceptual work to understand how the biological and social components of loneliness can be better defined.

At Leeds, I am building on this work to establish better quality research, policy, and practice in regard to loneliness. I am also a former care worker, and have an interest in men’s mental health, therefore I will be working on the MEND study that aims to attract and retain male care workers. Overall, I will use my mixed-methods expertise, passion for rigorous research, and multidisciplinary experiences, to further the research goals of NICHE and the social care team.

Qualifications

• PhD Health Sciences, University of York
• Ma Social Research, University of Sheffield
• Ba Sociology, University of Sheffield

Professional memberships

• American Psychological Association