The CPCR Team - Meet the team

Lydia is a registered nurse with a background in cancer care. She has a masters’ in Research Methods, and completed her PhD in 2021 with a focus on the value of Holistic Needs Assessment in supporting the needs of women with breast cancer.

Lydia has a joint post with The Christie and the University of Manchester as the Associate Chief Nurse for Research, Lead Nurse for Personalised Care and an NIHR Clinical Lecturer. Her research interests primarily sit within personalised care, supporting people to self-manage, and the psychosocial aspects of cancer care.

Dr Claire Higham has been an endocrine consultant at The Christie in Manchester since 2012. Her main clinical and academic interests are pituitary and metabolic bone disease, with a particular emphasis on pituitary and bone consequences of cancer treatment.

Claire is an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Manchester and lead for the bone health subtheme in the Manchester BRC-2 Living with and Beyond Cancer theme. She is also the interim lead for the CPCR research group and developing the research strategy for supportive oncology at The Christie.

She was the Greater Manchester CRN specialty lead for endocrinology/metabolism and lipids from 2014 to 2024. She is co-convener for the SfE Clinical Network: Endocrine consequences of Living with and Beyond Cancer and a member of the Royal Osteoporosis Society BDTAP (Bone Density Training and Assessment Panel).

Claire undertook a physiology degree and DPhil at Oxford followed by completion of medical training at Royal Free/University College London. Her junior doctor training was in London followed by higher specialist training in Manchester including a 3-year clinical research fellowship at The Christie.

Aysha Khan is a research associate focusing on health inequalities and the early detection of cancer. Aysha is currently undertaking her PhD in Cancer Sciences at The University of Manchester researching ways to improve the uptake of breast cancer screening of Pakistani women in Greater Manchester.

Kate is a registered children's nurse and has extensive clinical experience working in adolescent and young adult oncology at The Christie since 2003. Kate is a research fellow and completed a PhD in Cancer Sciences in January 2024. She continues to build her research experience, focusing on the assessment and management of unmet needs experienced by adolescent and young adult survivors of a central nervous system tumour.

Ramsay is a research assistant with the Christie Patient Centred Research team. He has a background in psychology, having completed his BSc in Psychology at Coventry University, and having worked therapeutically within paediatrics at Great Ormond Street Hospital and specialist perinatal at Liverpool Women’s Hospital. Prior to joining CPCR, Ramsay was involved in research surrounding improving access of ethnic minority women to perinatal services and the involvement of ethnic minority service users in the development of culturally informed psychological interventions.

Ramsay’s broad research interests include improving access to all minority groups and collaborating with minority service users to tackle health inequalities alongside enhancing the psychosocial wellbeing of service users and supporting carers and family members.

Melissa is a research associate project managing various studies that focus on exploring and improving patient and carer quality of life, the impact of bone health, and patient-reported outcome/experience measures. Melissa's undergraduate degree in biology and dissertation, looking at the effects of green tea extract on lung cancer cells, sparked her interest into a career in cancer research.

Melissa joined The Christie in 2017 as a clinical trials coordinator and later joined CPCR in 2019 as a research assistant, to be more patient focused. Melissa became a research associate after completing a secondment as a Population Health Fellow and a master’s in public health. Her dissertation focused on the inequalities associated with old age in cancer.

Grant Punnett is a research fellow who is currently conducting research aiming to enhance shared decision making between patients and healthcare professionals. Grant has previously worked within Staffordshire University’s Centre for Health Psychology and Centre for Sport and Exercise on multiple studies following completion of his masters’ degree in Health Psychology in 2009.

In 2013, Grant joined The Christie NHS Foundation Trust as a data manager for the Colorectal and Peritoneal Oncology Centre. He joined CPCR in 2016 and has managed several studies using various methodologies and analysis. Grant is currently undertaking his PhD at the University of Manchester.

Neil Soulsby is a research admin assistant with the CPCR team. He has several years’ experience of working in administrative roles within the civil service and NHS and a BSc (Hons) and MSc in mathematics. He first joined The Christie as a COVID testing team assistant in 2020 before becoming an MDT coordinator in 2021 and joining CPCR in 2024.

Sally Taylor is a senior research fellow specialising in research improving the experiences and quality of life (QOL) of patients living with and beyond cancer. Sally has undertaken research aimed at improving the QOL of cancer patients since 2005 at University of Leeds within the Psychosocial and Clinical Practice Research Group (2005 to 2013) and the Academic Unit of Palliative Care (2013 to 2016) and more recently in The Christie Patient Centred Research Team (2016 to present).

Sally completed her PhD in 2013 which focused on the development of QOL questionnaires for use in breast oncology clinical practice.

Ashleigh Ward is a research assistant in the Christie Patient Centred Research team. Whilst undertaking her undergraduate degree in human biology and a master’s degree in biomedicine, her research looked at the anti-cancer effects of a wheat-derived compound on lymphoma cells. Ashleigh first joined The Christie in 2019 as a translational research facilitator in the Experimental Cancer Medicine Team before joining the Christie Patient Centred Research team in January 2022.

During her time in this position, Ashleigh has worked on multiple projects including PIONEER, looking at patient and carer quality of life, as well as the Entia Liberty studies testing a novel home blood monitoring device.

Before relocating to The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2024 as Professor Chair and Head of School of Nursing, Professor Yorke was Professor of Cancer Nursing at University of Manchester and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust. She established the Christie Patient Centred Research group (CPCR) in 2015.

In 2024, Professor Yorke was awarded a Hong Kong Government Global STEM Professor, the only nursing academic to receive such an honour. She has particular expertise in the development and utilisation of Patient Reported Outcome and Experience- Measures (PROMS/PREMS). She is internationally recognised as an expert in PROM work; her work includes symptom-specific and quality-of-life measures that have been translated into more than 50 different languages. She was the Chair of The Christie ePROMs group, leading the implementation of electronic PROMs into routine clinical care.

Professor Yorke has held many competitive grants in this area including NIHR, Cancer Research UK, Marie Curie Research and Innovate UK. She is Associate Editor for European Journal of Cancer Nursing (EJON) and elected Secretary of the International Dyspnea Society.