Cari joined the School of Health Sciences, University of Dundee in January 2023 as a Senior Lecturer and member of the Mother and Infant Research Unit. Her background is in clinical paediatrics and her research focuses on improving the health and wellbeing of children and families. She has particular interest in the care and support needs of infants, children, and young people with life-shortening conditions. Her research in this area is widely recognised and contributes to influencing policy, education and practice that aims to enhance children’s supportive, palliative and end of life care.

Additional research interests include:

Infant feeding and childhood nutrition

Developing and evaluating innovative models of health care and services for children and families.

Improving access to health care and services for children and families, especially those from disadvantaged communities.

Enhancing skills of the health care workforce to deliver optimal palliative care and end of life care.

Cari’s methodological expertise is situated around qualitative methods, realist evaluation, mixed methods research, and qualitative evidence synthesis. She has developed innovative and collaborative research proposals and successfully secured research grant income from a range of funding bodies. Cari has considerable experience in leading research projects from conception to dissemination, often in the role of principal investigator, and in supporting and mentoring research staff. Patient and public involvement is central to her research, always ensuring she works in partnership with children and families.

Cari would welcome supervision enquiries from doctoral candidates with an interest in her research areas.

Cari has made significant contributions to nursing education across her career. She has expertise in curriculum development and experience of leading complex and strategic level education projects and programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Her educational philosophy is based on elements of situated learning theory, believing learning needs to be employed in authentic contexts, that is, in situations and settings that would normally involve that knowledge and skill. Her pedagogical approaches aim to develop essential skills such as critical enquiry, clinical reasoning, problem solving and critical reflection, all of which are essential attributes of a graduate nurse. Cari is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA).