Dr Sonia Dalkin is a Social Scientist at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom and lead of the Healthy Ageing Research Programme in ‘Fuse’, the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health. Her research interests and expertise include realist research, evaluation and review, qualitative research and mixed methods. Sonia has over 10 years experience in realist approaches and now provides training in the approach throughout the UK and internationally. Sonia’s research is mostly focused on health and social care service models and systems, with specific interests in community delivered services.
Her work portfolio reflects her role as a realist methodologist with current projects in a diverse range of topics including palliative care, co-morbidities, mental health, drug conditions, dementia care, welfare advice services and sports coaching. In 2018 she co-edited ‘Doing Realist Research’, published by SAGE, and recently her co-authored article ‘Community care for severely frail older people: Developing explanations of how, why and for whom it works’ won the International Journal of Older People Nursing Award for Outstanding Methodological Innovation in Gerontological Nursing Research (2019). She founded and continues to lead the Northern Realist Research Team Hub (NoRTH) from Northumbria University, which provides methodological expertise and support to those using realist approaches.