About us

Welcome to the Palliative Care Research Incubator. Whether you are already involved in research in palliative care or are aspiring to make a difference to patient care through increasing your involvement in research, we hope you will find the Incubator provides you with inspiration and new networks.

What we do

  • Inspire clinical and non-clinical researchers to conduct palliative and end of life care research.

    Membership is open to researchers in any care setting (acute, primary, community, residential (including hospices) from all health disciplines (medicine, nursing, allied health, psychology, pharmacy, paramedic), social care, and applied health researchers.

  • Support research development across a variety of health and social care domains.

    We support research development in a road range of care domains, including physical symptom management, psychological wellbeing, ethics, spiritual and cultural care, service organisation and delivery, and implementation.

  • Build communities that foster excellence and promote opportunities for collaboration.

    The Palliative Care Research Incubator aims to encourage early career interest in target disciplines to build identifiable communities through networking. This will include the provision of bespoke training and development support.

How will the Palliative Care Research Incubator support you?

  • Provide new, and enhance existing opportunities to network, collaborate and learn.

  • Signpost to career support, knowledge exchange and mentorship activities.

  • Promote excellence in Patient and Public Involvement and Equality Diversity and Inclusivity in research.

Meet our founders

The Palliative Care Research Incubator started in July 2025. It is co-lead by Professors Christina Faull and Candy McCabe.

  • Professor Candy McCabe is Head of Education and Research, Dorothy House Hospice, Winsley, and Professor of Clinical Research and Practice, University of the West of England, Bristol.

    She is a registered nurse and previous Florence Nightingale Foundation Clinical Professor in Nursing. She has worked as a clinical academic for nearly thirty years in the specialities of Rheumatology and chronic pain, and joined Dorothy House Hospice Care in 2019. 

    Her research and clinical interests directly relate to increasing our understanding of the lived experiences of those with life limiting conditions, and the mechanisms and potential therapies for chronic unexplained pain.

    She established with colleagues the national centres for multi-disciplinary rehabilitation for people with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), and for complex cancer late effects. She was the nursing representative on NICE Guidelines for chronic primary pain, past-Chair of the IASP Special Interest Group for CRPS, and past President of the British Health Professionals in Rheumatology.

    She is a strong advocate for clinical academic careers.

  • Professor Christina Faull has recently retired having been a consultant in palliative medicine for over 30 years.  She has held leadership positions in research at LOROS Hospice, Leicester and in the NIHR nationally and in the East Midlands. 

    With support of, amongst others, her PhD and ACF fellows she has worked to improve the end of life care of ventilator supported patients with MND and respiratory disease leading the national Association for Palliative Medicine Guidance on effective symptom management in the withdrawal of ventilation. 

    Her other applied research interests include 25 years of work to improve outcomes and experiences for people from diverse ethnic and faith backgrounds; in communication in key conversations in advanced illness, including working with interpreters; and latterly in novel intervention for anxiety linked to the breathlessness of advanced respiratory disease.  

Meet the PRI Steering Committee

  • Emma is currently co-investigator on the HOPSCOTCH study ‘Helping Optimise Primary Care Support During Transition From Children’s Hospice Care’. This project uses Experience-Based Co-design (EBCD) methodology. The Team are working nationally with young people, families and healthcare professionals in children’s and adult’s hospices and primary care to develop resources to enable GP support of young people with life-limiting conditions.  

    Emma’s other recent research interests include improving symptom management in advanced cancer. The RESOLVEi project has focused on non-pharmacological management of psychological distress. 

  • Kathy Rogers is a registered nurse with clinical experience in community nursing, end of life care and care of people with long-term conditions. She is an experienced lecturer with over 10 years’ experience in higher education. Kathy runs and contributes to various higher education modules and programmes including end of life care, research theory, community nursing and cancer leadership in the UK and Hong Kong. 

    Kathy completed my MSc dissertation as part of a Macmillan funded research internship, undertaking a systematic review of qualitative evidence on the experiences of living long-term with the consequences of cancer and its treatment. This work was published in 2021.   

    In 2020 Kathy began an internal pre-doctoral training programme and successfully obtained UWE College funding for a part-time PhD programme which commenced in 2022 and is due to finish in 2027. Her PhD explores the experiences of caregivers in non-malignant respiratory disease, in particular pulmonary fibrosis, at the end of life.

  • Felicity has thirty years’ experience in research. A social researcher by background, she has extensive experience and knowledge of palliative care research. Felicity is an internationally recognized leader in palliative care research publishing extensively in the area, with over 180+ research outputs and a successful history of grant acquisition, securing over 3 million pounds. She has been returned to three consecutive Research Assessment Exercises (REF 2008, 2014 and 2021). She is Chair of UU Palliative Care Research Strand and an executive board member of Irish Association of Palliative Care. She is also UU’s representative for the All-Ireland Institute of Hospice and the Palliative Care.   

    Felicity is a reviewer for several national and international research-funding boards and vice Chair of the Institute of Nursing, Paramedic and Health Sciences Ethics Filter Committee and member of UU Research Ethics Committee. She serves as an Editorial Board Member for the Palliative Care section of the journal Healthcare, Journal of Nursing Education, EAPC Public Health and Palliative Care Newsletter, and Practice and Futures & Foresight Science.  

    Her current research interests include palliative care in chronic illness, palliative care workforce (health care assistants), decision making at end of life; and public health approach to palliative care. 

  • Martin Williams has more than 25 years’ experience as the director of regional and national support services for health and social care research, including more recently the NIHR Research Design Service (RDS) East Midlands and the NIHR Research Support Service (RSS) Leicester and Partners. Between 2009 to 2024, Martin was National Director of the NIHR Research Design Service (RDS) and member of the National Institute for Health and Social Care Research (NIHR) Strategy Board. As National Director, his responsibilities included to provide strategic leadership to the RDS and to help the NIHR to establish and address research priorities in health and care through research. 

    Martin has held several leadership roles at Leicester, including as Director of Research and Enterprise for the Department Health Sciences and University NIHR Key Funder Working Group Lead. He is currently Research Director for the Division of Public Health and Epidemiology. 

    The research support contracts mentioned above have been delivered through awards of >£25 million to promote and support high-quality research in health and social care across England. Over a 25-year period, Martin’s team has supported > 5,000 research funding applications, helping teams to secure >£500 million in research awards.

  • Helen is director of brainstrust, a brain cancer charity with a national footprint which she founded in 2006. Helen uses the experience of being a patient, relative, member of the public and a caregiver to support 1000s of patients who have brain cancer. She works with cancer-related institutions, professionals and charities, to ensure that she provides the most up to date, relevant and appropriate information. This 360-degree view means that she is well placed to understand the perspectives of patients, caregivers and health care professionals at all phases including end of life.   

    Her roles in brainstrust and as a consumer representative with various bodies are as a disseminator of information and a provider of advice on achieving effective consumer involvement and creating a voice. Helen’s key drivers are the patients, their caregivers and healthcare professionals, with whom she interacts daily. Her ethos of 'none of us is as smart as all of us' is a core value for her.  

    Elemental to Helen’s work is high-performance coaching. This sets brainstrust apart. When we are no longer to able to change a situation we are challenged to change ourselves. The coaching relationship enables people to face these challenges, so that they learn how to develop resilience and utilise resources to their full potential. 

    Helen stays up to date with relevant research, ensuring her reading is not brain centric. The skills she developed whilst studying for her PhD means that she is tenacious in spirit, but with a listening ear.  

    Helen is involved in a significant number of trials, from basic science, early phase and through to the clinic. She supports a large community of advocates, all of whom are supported to deliver PPIE so that it is in the DNA of research.

  • Ikumi is a medical anthropologist and qualitative health researcher currently based at the University of Dundee. Her work focuses on palliative and end-of-life care, chronic illness, decision-making, uncertainty, and care across home, community, and hospital settings. She is also interested in the social aspects of death and dying, grief, and digital technologies related to death, dying and bereavement.

    Her route into palliative care research began with her PhD, an ethnographic study of death, dying, and palliative care in Japan. She has since worked on UK studies of serious illness, conservative kidney management, out-of-hours end-of-life care, and community access to medicines and emergency services.

    More recently, Ikumi worked on a UK-wide study of the palliative and end-of-life care research workforce, including mapping research workforce, a national survey, and stakeholder discussions on research capacity, career pathways, and sustainability. She is currently working on a realist review of context-sensitive palliative care for older adults with neurodegenerative conditions in Mexico. She maintains links with palliative care and death studies researchers in Japan and is interested in interdisciplinary and international collaboration.

    She has experience in qualitative research, ethnography, mixed-methods analysis, and evidence synthesis.

    Through the Incubator, Ikumi would like to bring the perspectives of social science researchers and those with non-linear career paths to discussions about the future of palliative and end-of-life care research. Her experience as a mid-career researcher whose career has been based on short-term and fixed-term research posts has shaped her interest in career development, funding opportunities, and diverse academic trajectories.