Dr Simon Pini

Profile

I am currently an Associate Professor of Child Health Research in the Division of Psychological and Social Medicine. In July 2026 I completed a 5 year NIHR Advanced Fellowship, which focussed on the school lives of secondary school pupils living with long-term physical health conditions. I work closely with academics, clinicians and healthcare professionals associated with paediatric research in and around Leeds, and have contacts adn collaborators nationally and internationally in this field.

I am an experienced applied qualitative health researcher and favour using interview and focus group based research to understand experiences of health and healthcare. I supervise and advise a range of students and early-career researchers in qualitative methods and have taught at under-graduate and post-graduate levels in this topic area.

I co-chaired the Qualitative Reflective Practice Group in the School of Medicine for several years, and am still actively involved in this network. I enjoy a variety of qualitative methods, but have particular expertise in using alternative interview methods, such as photo-elicitation interviewing.

Prior to the NIHR fellowship, I worked for 3 years in Primiary and Palliative Care, and 10 years in the Patient-Centred Outcomes Research Group at St. James's Hospital, where I had several Research Fellow and Research Assitant roles on various projects. The majority of these roles involved working with oncology patients and professionals to understand and improve aspects of oncology care including; improved end of life planning conversations, enhanced symptom reporting, questionnaire development for chronic cancer, and expressive writing for patients following mastectomy.

I have a long-term and ongoing interest in teenage and young adult oncology. I worked for five years as a Specialist Learning Mentor with the Teenage and Young Adult Support Service in Leeds.

Following on from this I completed a PhD looking at the education engagement and wellbeing of teenagers with cancer. I have also had a Research Fellow post working on a European network of studies aiming to benchmark care for this population across Europe.

Responsibilities

• Research Lead for Psychological and Social Medicine

Primary investigator (PI)

• Investigating and documenting the school lives of high school pupils living with chronic or life-limiting illness

Qualifications

• PhD - Psychology
• MSc - Appplied psychology
• BSc - Human psychology

Student education

• I am currently supervising 3 PhD students in a variety of areas of child health research
• I supervise 1 Clinical Pyschlogy Doctoral student
• I am supervising 2 pre-doctoral candidates in the development of PhD proposals
• I mentor a variety of early career researchers to support them navigate and plan their research careers.

Research groups and institutes

• St Gemma's Academic Unit of Palliative Care
• Leeds Institute of Health Sciences

Current postgraduate researchers

• Stephen Morris
• Bethan Spencer
• Stephen Morris
• Heather Rostron