Andrew is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Health Sciences and a member of the Mother, Infant and Child Health research group (known as MIRU).   

Andrew qualified as a midwife in 1986, after which he worked in both Scotland and Kenya as a midwife. Returning to full-time education while working part time clinically, he completed an MA (Honours) in Social Policy and Law at Edinburgh University (1992), followed by a PhD (1997), also at Edinburgh. Focussing on clinical negligence litigation and its impact on clinical practice, this was funded by an Economic and Social Research Council studentship and the Iolanthe Trust. These experiences, and subsequent involvement in clinical risk management, led to a long-running medico-legal column in a midwifery journal and several chapters, including in the forthcoming book ‘Critical studies of risk and uncertainty in maternity care: an international perspective’. 

Returning after the PhD to full-time clinical practice, Andrew became more involved in clinical research and part-time teaching, eventually joining the University of Dundee in 2001 as a full-time midwifery educator and researcher. An early aspect of this research experience concerned the development of the Mother-Generated Index (MGI), a quality of life tool that has since been used in twelve other countries and which is currently being used in commercial research. 

In his spare time Andrew writes children’s fiction.

Since 2016 Andrew’s research interests have been focussed mainly on developing the Quality Maternal and Newborn Care (QMNC) Framework which was published in the Lancet Series on Midwifery. Using this initially in qualitative research, this has since been developed in conjunction with partners in Australia, Ghana, India and Norway as a quantitative survey tool – the QMNC Framework index (QMNCFi). Andrew is a founder member of the QMNC Research Alliance, which is assisting in promoting the QMNCFi in other countries. These currently include Palestine, China and Brazil. 

Andrew’s research work has seen him invited to present in Australia, Brazil, China, Finland, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Turkey.  He has been an Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney since 2010, and also a Visiting Professor and Visiting Scholar at the Federal University of Ceará in Fortaleza, Brazil. Andrew’s global connections also include being co-PI on the QuaMiS study in India and being invited to examine PhD theses from Aotearoa / New Zealand, Australia, England and South Africa, as well as Masters’ theses in Brazil and Germany. 

In addition to supervising PhD and Masters’ students, Andrew’s work in MIRU includes mentoring junior researchers and post-doctoral staff, as well as hosting visiting overseas academics.