Professor Christina Victor
Director of Research Institute / Professor

Summary

Christina joined Brunel in October 2009. She is  Professor of Gerontology and Public Health  in the College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences and Associate PVC-Research Culture and Governance. She is also Director of the  Institute of Health, Medicine and Environments.

Christina started her academic career as a geographer with a particular interest in the spatial distribution of health and illness and access to, and provision of, health and social care. She has a BA in Geography from Swansea University and an M Phil in medical geography from Nottingham.  It was whilst working at the Medical School in Cardiff that she developed  her interests in gerontology and her PhD investigated outcome after discharge for older people in Wales and she now focuses her interests in public health/population medicine on to the experiences of old age and later life. She has a special interest in researching loneliness and isolation.

Christina’s initial research interests were focussed upon  health and health inequalities and the evaluation of services for older people.   More recently she developed a keen interest in loneliness and isolation; the benefits of exercise and activity in later life and the experiences of old age and later life amongst minority communities and the experience of ageing for people with intellectual disabilities. She has received funding for her research from a range of funders including ESRC, NIHR, Dunhill Medical Trust, Leverhulme and the British Academy.

Christina has written over  400 peer reviewed articles and published  8 books in the field of gerontology. She is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences.  In 2017 Christina was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award of the British Society of Gerontology and awarded Fellowship of the Gerontological Society of America. Her work has been cited 23,000 times and her H idex is 78. She has 3 articles in the list of the 100 most cited articles in the field of loneliness and is ranked as one of the top 100 social science and humanities researchers in the UK. 

Qualifications:

PhD, M Phil, BA

Responsibility

Committee Responsibilities:

• Senate
• University Research Ethics Committee
• University Research and Knowledge Transfer Committee

Teaching Interests:

Development of research students and post-doctoral/early career researchers. Contributor to the M Sc in Public Health and Health Promotion