Professor Lesley Dibley, School of Health Sciences; Faculty of Education, Health and Human Sciences. Lesley is Professor of Qualitative Nursing Research and leads the Centre for Chronic Illness and Ageing at the Institute for Lifecourse Development (ILS).
Contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals:
Lesley's work supports SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being.
Living with chronic illnesses
Lesley's work explores the everyday experiences of living with chronic illnesses - particularly Inflammatory Bowel Disease, and Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis - with a view to understanding the factors which influence and support adjustment to chronic illness, and facilitate living well with long-term health conditions, including family experiences when a relative has a chronic illness. Addressing these aspects produces evidence which enhances patient self-management, thus promoting patient autonomy and reducing demand on NHS services.
Lesley’s work is primarily qualitative, producing patient-driven evidence which adds context to other forms of patient experience and outcomes data; she has particular expertise in interpretive (hermeneutic) phenomenology and, in collaboration with Dr Mel Duffy (Dublin City University, Ireland, Professor Suzanne Dickerson (University of Buffalo, New York, USA, and Prof Roxanne Vandermause (University of Missouri- St Louis, USA), wrote and published the first handbook guiding students and supervisors in the philosophy, methodology and methods of this approach to research (Dibley et al. 2020. Doing hermeneutic phenomenological research: a practical guide. London: Sage Publications). Lesley supervises PhD students delivering projects addressing these core areas of living well with chronic illness, and phenomenology.
In 2019, Lesley was the University's research pioneer via the Made@Uni initiative, bringing the work of researchers who make a direct difference to people's lives, into public knowledge. She is regularly invited to speak at national and international conferences and clinical (nurse) training events, and has over 40 publications in high impact journals.
Her work has been used to inform policy documents by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and information materials for members of the UK’s foremost IBD charity, Crohn’s & Colitis UK.
