Dr Alison Fixsen is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Chair of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Research and Ethics Committee at the University of Westminster. She is a highly experienced qualitative researcher in critical mental health and social sciences with a particular knowledge of social prescribing, prescription drug dependency and eating disorders. Her projects and published peer reviewed articles and book chapters spanning psychology, sociology, health sciences and education. She has been an invited speaker at conferences all over the world, and has been interviewed about her work for television and other media outlets, including BBC breakfast news. She is presently writing a book on the social and industrial construction of eating disorders in the 21st-century.
2021: Principal Investigator- Green social prescribing during and post Covid: a UK based study.
2020: Principal Investigator: Pathways and barriers to social prescribing: Co-producing initiatives which address social and health inequalities in urban areas (Community funding).
2018-19: Co-investigator: NHS funded evaluation of a social prescribing scheme in Shropshire.
2019: Co-investigator National Lottery funded social prescribing outcomes project.
2018 - 2019 Co-investigator University of Malaysia funded project on orthorexia nervosa.
2012-15: Principal Investigator: ‘Netography’ of benzodiazepine user stories of withdrawal and recovery, which has been widely read and discussed among stakeholders including those in the BZD virtual community.
2010-2014: Principal Investigator on 2 university based research studies, the first investigating the emotion work of final year students undergoing personal and professional development (PPD) and clinical training (Fixsen and Ridge 2012), and the other a secondary analysis of level 4 and 5 student experiences of this programme (Fixsen et al. 2015).
2013-17 (Doctorate): Ethnographic exploration of staff experiences of Learning and Development programmes.
1995- 1996: Joint Principal Investigator on a randomised trial of homeopathic versus standard care in the treatment of otitis media with effusion in children, later published in two journals.