Professor Kathryn Almack is the Theme Lead for the ARC East of England's Support for Ageing and Living with Long Term Conditions theme. Kathryn is at the University of Hertfordshire and a senior member of CRIPACC (Centre for Research in Public Health and Community Care). She is a sociologist and her main research interests includes relationships of care in people's lives; social care research; and LGBT lives across the life course. Kathryn is Chief Investigator for the SCRiPT study (Enhancing research capacity in adult social care and social work in the East of England: testing the feasibility of Social Care Research in Practice Teams) and she is the EOE ARC lead for the National Priorities Programme for Adult Social Care and Social Work, leading work on one the Priority topics - digital technologies to support well-being of community dwelling older adults in receipt of social care and their carers (the DiTSoW study). Outside of the ARC, Kathryn is co-leading work packages relating to older LGBT people on a participatory multi-site research project, IncludeAge, funded by the ESRC. The project will work with LGBT+ people and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to explore their everyday realities of negotiating inclusion in local and online communities, working towards co-developing solutions for inclusive communities.
Kathryn has a background of working in Local Authority and voluntary sectors as a Community Development and Policy Officer and she has an effective sustained track record of her research being used to shape and influence policy and professional practice and improving health, wellbeing and social care outcomes of the populations she works with.
email: k.almack@herts.ac.uk