Presenters

Dr Gemma Clunie (Course Director)
Gemma Clunie is the Lead Clinical Academic for Allied Health Professions at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. She is passionate about building research capacity and capability for her AHPs. Her research interests focus on swallowing and voice disorders that are particularly focused on benign ENT and head and neck cancer populations, and she has methodological expertise and experience in qualitative research, observational studies and mixed methods. She has an interest in the use of ultrasound in SLT practice, particularly its applications within head and neck cancer assessment and rehabilitation and is a member of the International Ultrasound Group. She is Chair and clinical-academic representative for the Community for Allied Health Professionals Research (CAHPR) strategy committee. Since completing her PhD in 2022 she has had several funded post-doctoral fellowships and is currently a NIHR Senior Clinical and Practitioner Research Award (SCPRA) fellow.

Dr Lina Johansson (Course Director)

Dr Margaret Coffey
Dr Margaret Coffey is a Clinical Academic Speech and Language Therapist with extensive experience in the evaluation and treatment of dysphagia. Margaret has developed her clinical skills working in recognised centres of excellence in both the UK and the USA.  She currently works at Imperial College Healthcare Trust in London and is an honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College London. Margaret is a Royal College of Speech and language Therapists designated national clinical advisor.

Margaret is especially interested in the evidence based use of instrumental swallow evaluation tools including FEES to evaluate and manage swallowing function after head and neck cancer.. She was one of the first SLTs in the UK to be awarded a prestigious National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Doctoral Fellowship pioneering the use of FEES as a swallow evaluation tool for people with laryngectomy. Margaret was also one of the first SLTs to be awarded a NIHR Advanced Fellowship to continue her post-doctoral work on an early stage clinical trial investigating the feasibility of an exercise based intervention to improve swallow function for people with laryngectomy. 

Margaret has published in leading peer reviewed journals and regularly provides teaching and organises courses aimed at promoting evidence based clinical care. She has contributed to national clinical guidance including the RCSLT FEES and HRM position papers and competency frameworks and the UK Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer guidelines.

Margaret was recognised by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) with a fellowship in 2021. Margaret was also awarded an honorary MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2022 for services to Speech and Language Therapy.

Dr Donna Kennedy
Donna Kennedy is an NIHR Imperial BRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Pain Research Group, Department of Surgery & Cancer, Imperial College London (ICL) and Clinical Specialist in Hand Therapy at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICHT). Donna has extensive clinical experience with expertise in hand trauma and acquired, rheumatologic and surgical conditions of the hand and upper limb. Donna has a BSc in Occupational Therapy from Tufts University and an MSc in Health Sciences from the University of East Anglia. In 2018 she completed an NIHR funded Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship, receiving a PhD in Pain Research from ICL. Her Doctoral work investigates the association of neuropathic pain phenotype with the outcome of carpal tunnel surgery. 

Ms Maria Piggin
Maria Piggin is the Partnerships and Training Manager within the Patient Experience Research Centre (PERC) providing public involvement training, advice and support primarily to the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre but also to a number of research teams across Imperial College including the Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) in Modelling Methodology.

Schedule