Fiona Alderdice is the Senior Social Scientist at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit and Professor in Perinatal Health and Wellbeing at Queen’s University Belfast. Fiona has an undergraduate degree and PhD in Psychology from Queen’s University Belfast and her research interests in maternal and child health date back to 1992 when she first worked at the NPEU as a research fellow.
She was awarded a MRC HSR training fellowship in 1998 to support her work on complex pregnancy and she joined the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Queens University Belfast in 2002 . Fiona was promoted to Chair in Perinatal Health and Well-being in 2010 and she joined the NPEU in January 2017.
She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is a long-standing Cochrane reviewer. Her research focuses on 1) assessing maternal/infant need and experience by developing population surveys that can be used to benchmark perinatal health and wellbeing nationally and internationally 2) developing interventions to promote psychological wellbeing in the perinatal period and 3) conducting follow up studies of vulnerable infants e.g. preterm and growth restricted babies.