Caroline Dodd-Reynolds

• Professor of Physical Activity, Durham University

Caroline joined Durham University in August 2014. She was previously Principal Lecturer and Director of Programmes within the Department of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation at Northumbria University. Caroline was awarded her PhD. in 2005 by the University of Exeter (supervised by Professor Neil Armstrong and Dr Joanne Welsman at the Children's Health and Exercise Research Centre).

Caroline has many years of experience across novel design and evaluation of research linked to community-based physical activity, health and inequalities. Most recently she has been leading cross and interdisciplinary research across two themes:

1. Consideration of the need for universal versus targeted programmes and provision of understanding for local partners across design, evaluation and effectiveness of strategies for underserved communities. We have published extensively around exercise referral, providing policy insight to local partners. Nationally, recent work funded by Sport England and in partnership with Durham Research Methods Centre, has been around modelling of Active Lives datasets to impute missing data and provide local-level intelligence on sport and volunteering inequalities linked to a range of different sociodemographic factors.

2. Use of novel concepts and methods to enable interdisciplinary study of physical activity and health inequalities in young people at-risk of marginalisation. Whilst most researchers would now agree that physical activity inequalities exist, there is little insight into the complexity of inactivity, or indeed how to work with young people to better understand and mediate this. In our work, we apply different (and often non-traditional) methods to empower change in different ways. For example, we recently conceptualised physical activity insecurity as limiting the ability to be active and reinforced by worries and experiences of feeling uncomfortable or unsafe, for young people already experiencing inequalities.

Caroline's work has been published in numerous different international academic journals and she regularly presents at national and international conferences. She is a member of the International Society for Physical Activity and Health, the International Society for Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity, and HEPA. She is a Topic Editor for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and sits on the Editorial Board for Physical Therapy Reviews. Regionally, Caroline is on the steering group for the Fuse Physical Activity Network (Fuse, the SPHR funded Centre for Translational Research in Public Health) and has been on the organising committee for numerous Fuse workshops. She is also Co-Director of the Physical Activity Special Interest Group, an interdisciplinary network within the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University.

Caroline is a Senior Fellow of the HEA and has a wealth of internal and external academic quality and standards experience across undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She has held various departmental and faculty leadership roles throughout her career, and is currently Director of Education for the Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences where she has strategic responsibility for undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum.

Research interests
Community-based physical activity and inequalities
Novel methods to explore physical activity and inequalities

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