Alison Thomson is Senior Lecturer in Patient Public Involvement (PPI) and Public Engagement in Science (PES) at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). Her practice-based research is situated at the intersections of PPI, PES, Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Design Research. With this research, she aims to articulate how design-led methods can study the notion of ‘patient experience’ within both healthcare and medical research settings, leading to the design of more inventive health interactions.
Alison studied Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art (2008 – 2010), before embarking on a long-term collaboration with the Barts MS research team at QMUL. Here she designed interactions between people with MS and researchers studying the condition. Her designs investigate how patient experiences of people with MS might be improved by way of speculative design, design-research and design-led interventions. This work is documented in her PhD based at Goldsmiths, University of London where she was supervised by Professor Bill Gaver and Professor Alex Wilkie. Her PhD thesis, Re-doing patient experience for people with MS through design-led research (2019) explores how design-led research can improve the patient experience by using a methodological approach informed by STS to address the performativity of method and the multiple enactments of patient experience.
Alison is based in the Centre for Preventive Neurology, within the Wolfson Institute of Population Health at QMUL where she co-leads a cross institute theme on public participation. She is also a member of the Design Societies Research Unit at Goldsmiths which combines and cultivates expertise in STS and design to engage technoscientific and environmental matters of care and concern.
Alison's latest project, explores the patient experience of people with MS from minoritised ethnic backgrounds. This uses a participatory research approach, working with 5 people living with MS as ‘peer researchers’. She is also co-leading a research team to develop a Participatory Research program supported by Research England, with the goal of expanding participatory research activities at QMUL.
Alison has recently been awarded funding from the NIHR to develop inclusive co-design tools for health-related co-design in partnership with minority ethnic communities.
Alison peer-reviews for various scientific journals, conferences, and funding organisations, including The MS Journal, BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, MS and Related Disorders, Evidence and Policy, ESRC, The Wellcome Trust, NIHR, ECTRIMS, and the Design Research Society.