Sarah-Anne is a Health Geographer who, since PhD graduation (2007), has worked continuously in research orientated roles with University of the Highlands and Islands.

She has research expertise in the area of rural health and wellbeing and the use of participatory, qualitative methods. She has worked on several, large-scale international projects and has been attracting research income since 2009 as a PI and Co-I; including RCUK grants.

Her work focuses on: i) community engagement and co-production in rural health and ii) the role of the outdoors and natural landscape in the promotion of health and wellbeing. Currently, she is part of a project using participatory digital platforms to enhance resilience and mental health of Scottish frontline health and care staff during COVID-19.

She leads current research activities in these two areas within the UHI Rural Health and Wellbeing Research Division.

Previous projects as PI have included leading the UHI research elements of a large-AHRC grant on community participation and leading a Scottish Government funded, qualitative evaluation of NHS primary care redesign (which took a longitudinal approach over four years).

Sarah-Anne has been researching the relationships between landscape, nature and wellbeing for over a decade. Her review of children’s use of the outdoors was one of the first publications on this topic and is highly cited. It has been downloaded over 3,000 times from Public Health England and is widely quoted outside academia.

She has co-authored guidance on the evaluation of health interventions in the outdoors and been awarded participatory research projects (as PI) funded by AHRC on the role of hospital grounds in the promotion of health and wellbeing.

Her work draws on theory from health geography, particularly relating to the spatialities of wellbeing, assemblage theory and therapeutic landscape. She has combined this with the use of qualitative GIS in two projects led by colleagues at Swinburn University (including an ARC Discovery grant).

Sarah-Anne has published in some of the highest ranking journals in her field, such as Social Science and Medicine and Health and Place; as well as co-editing a book on responses to rural ageing populations. She is currently co-editing a book on geographies of rural mental health, which will be published by Taylor and Francis.

In 2018, Sarah-Anne was awarded a Readership in Rural Health and Wellbeing by the University of the Highlands and Islands in recognition of her international reputation in rural health research.