Dr. Sarah Parker

Biography

Dr Sarah Parker is a Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Centre for Health Policy and Management, School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin (TCD). With extensive experience leading qualitative and mixed methods research initiatives and teams, she is passionate about tackling complex social problems through direct policy and system impact. Her research covers a broad spectrum of policy issues including those related to health, homelessness and social care systems. She worked on the HRB-funded Foundations project, researching how COVID-19 impacted health system and policy reform. Currently, she leads on an HRB-EfP grant to assess the Irish Health System as well as the Government-funded `Care Leavers - 10 Years On" study. She was recently appointed Chair of the HPM/CGH research ethics committee (2024-present); elected Co-Chair of Trinity"s Academy of Postdoctoral Fellows (2024-present); awarded a place on the Aurora Women in Leadership programme (2024-2025); and is an Invited Member of the Focus Ireland Research Sub-Committee (2024-present). Sarah supervises BA, M.Sc. and PhD students. She leads on the Research Methods and Dissertation module on the M.Sc. in Health Policy and Management (2023-present); lectures on the SPHeRE PhD programme (2022-present); and lectured on the BA in Social Studies (2021-2023). She is Deputy Academic Editor of the School of Medicine Newsletter (2024-present). Prior to this, Sarah was a researcher at the Children's Research Centre, TCD, where she worked on several commissioned projects including a biographical study of women's homelessness and a qualitative longitudinal study of homeless youth and their families. Sarah holds several degrees from TCD including a PhD in Social Policy (2021), M.Sc. in Applied Social Research (2011) and BA in Sociology and Social Policy (2006). Funded by the Irish Research Council, she led an award-winning mixed methods study on family homelessness for her doctorate. She has co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed articles, reports and book chapters, achieving a h-index of 12 and 558 citations (Google Scholar). Her most recent work has been published in edited collections by Routledge, Edward Elgar and Palgrave MacMillan as well as high-impact journals including The Lancet Regional Health - Europe, Global Health Research and Policy, Housing Studies, International Journal on Homelessness, Child & Family Social Work, Journal of Family Issues, European Journal of Homelessness, HRB - Open, Frontiers in Public Health, BMC Public Health and BMC Health Services Research.