I am a senior research fellow in the Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at University College London. My current research is broadly focussed on the predictors and consequences of chronic health problems, multimorbidity and ageing using large population-based cohorts. I have previously worked on projects trying to understand the impacts of war exposure in Syrian refugee children and the link between depression and hormones. My research often brings together both biological (genetic, hormonal) and non-biological data (interview, electronic health record).
In her debut Mental Elf blog, Demelza Smeeth discusses the latest research on the inheritance of trauma across three generations of Syrian refugees; summarising a paper that looks into the epigenetic signatures of intergenerational exposure.