Ian Kellar

Narrative CV, November 2026. Written for NIHR in the narrative CV format. The full PDF is available on request.

At a glance

• Career funding: more than £33.9M secured, excluding studentships, across NIHR PGfAR, HS&DR, HTA, PDG, RfPB and RIGHT, the MRC, the Nuffield Foundation, CRUK and SBRI Healthcare.
• Currently active: 14 grants as chief investigator or co-investigator, including three NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research.
• Publications: more than 150 outputs, 4,930 citations, h-index 31, i10-index 56, 72 per cent open access, in the BMJ, Lancet Global Health, Psychological Bulletin, BMJ Quality and Safety and Health Technology Assessment.
• Supervision: nine PhD completions since 2015, two current doctoral students, and four NIHR fellowship holders supported as mentor or co-supervisor.
• Society and committee work: President of the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine, 2025 to 2027, and member of the NIHR PGfAR funding sub-committee and the NIHR Postdoctoral Award committee.

Qualifications

• CPsychol (Health), British Psychological Society, 2006.
• DPhil Social Psychology, University of Sussex, 2005, on an ESRC competitive studentship.
• BA (Hons) Social Psychology (2:1), University of Sussex, 2000.

Positions held

• Professor of Health Psychology, University of Sheffield, 2023 to November 2026.
• Associate Professor, previously Lecturer, University of Leeds, 2013 to 2023.
• Research Associate, Primary Care Unit, University of Cambridge, 2005 to 2012.
• Research Fellow, Centre for Healthcare Research, University of Brighton, 2004 to 2005.

Context

I trained as a social psychologist at the University of Sussex, where my interest in applying psychological theory to real-world health problems crystallised during my DPhil. My doctoral research, supervised by Peter Harris and Charles Abraham, evaluated brief theory-based interventions to promote health behaviours, funded through an ESRC competitive studentship. That work set the foundations I have drawn on since: the systematic use of behaviour change theory to specify intervention content, rigorous experimental evaluation, and transparent reporting of what works, what does not, and why.

A seven-year postdoctoral position at the University of Cambridge Primary Care Unit, from 2005 to 2012, broadened my perspective. Working inside a multidisciplinary clinical research environment, I developed expertise in complex intervention development and evaluation in applied NHS settings. I contributed to programmes addressing informed choice in screening, medication adherence and chronic disease self-management, and learned to work at the interface between behavioural science and clinical practice.

My appointment as Lecturer, later Associate Professor, at the University of Leeds in 2013 marked the move to independent research leadership. I built a portfolio across several health conditions, united by one theoretical and methodological approach: the systematic integration of the Theoretical Domains Framework, the Behaviour Change Wheel and the BCT Taxonomy to identify barriers, select intervention strategies, specify active content, and test hypothesised mechanisms through embedded process evaluation.

From 2023 to November 2026 I was Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Sheffield, where I led the Wellbeing of Individuals and Society research cluster. My research consistently prioritises populations systematically excluded from health research: people with severe mental illness, older adults with multiple comorbidities, autistic adults, and communities in South Asia.

Contributions to knowledge

My principal contribution is demonstrating how behaviour change theory can be applied with rigour and coherence across the full intervention lifecycle, from evidence synthesis through co-design to definitive evaluation, in the populations and settings where the work is most needed.

The DIAMONDS programme, an NIHR PGfAR award of £2.48M, shows the approach. People with severe mental illness experience profound health inequalities, including sharply elevated diabetes risk and a 15 to 20 year reduction in life expectancy. Working with Najma Siddiqi and colleagues, I led the behavioural science workstream across the full MRC complex interventions pipeline: systematic evidence synthesis, core outcome set development through Delphi consensus, identification of modifiable constructs through qualitative research informed by the Theoretical Domains Framework, co-design of a supported self-management intervention with people with lived experience through the DIAMONDS Voice PPI group, feasibility testing, and a multicentre randomised trial of 380 participants across several NHS sites. The programme has produced a published core outcome set, an intervention development paper in JMIR and feasibility findings in Frontiers in Health Services, with the definitive trial ongoing.

In global health, my work on the MCLASS and CLASS programmes with Kamran Siddiqi brought behaviour change science into faith-based public health intervention. We operationalised Quranic verses as vehicles for behaviour change messages targeting second-hand smoke exposure in Muslim communities in Bangladesh and Pakistan. That required navigating real cultural sensitivities: Imams replaced about half the selected verses with alternatives they judged more appropriate for worshippers. I led the behaviour change technique specification and programme theory development, which produced a cluster randomised trial and a school-based extension reaching 2,720 children.

In 2025 and 2026 I secured new awards spanning aphasia rehabilitation, emergency medicine, bowel cancer screening inequalities and autism. Across those programmes I contribute the behaviour change and implementation science components, so that intervention content is systematically specified and theoretically grounded.

I have also contributed to positive deviance research in healthcare, leading the first systematic review of positive deviance methods in health services and contributing to observational studies of exceptionally safe hospital wards. That work, published in BMJ Quality and Safety, shifted attention from deficit-based problem identification toward learning from excellence.

Collaboration and team working

My research runs through sustained, multi-institutional collaborations in which I bring behavioural and implementation science expertise to clinical and public health teams. The model is deliberate: the health problems I work on require clinical knowledge I do not have, and the clinical teams benefit from theoretical and methodological input that strengthens intervention specification and evaluation.

These networks span Sheffield, Leeds, York, City, UEA and Cambridge, and institutions in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. I maintain active research relationships with more than 40 co-investigators, contributing to programmes led by colleagues including Rebecca Palmer on aphasia partnership training, Vinidh Paleri on head and neck cancer diagnostics, Philip Conaghan on musculoskeletal digital intervention, and Debi Bhattacharya on hospital deprescribing. In each I hold the behaviour change and implementation science components: barrier identification through the Theoretical Domains Framework, intervention content specification through the BCT Taxonomy, process evaluation design, and fidelity assessment.

I invest in the next generation of researchers. I have supervised nine PhD completions since 2015, three as primary supervisor, and currently supervise two doctoral students. I have supported four NIHR fellowship holders as a named mentor or co-supervisor: Nicola Shaw on cystic fibrosis medication adherence, Nicholas Behn on communication partner training after acquired brain injury, Sam Watt on sugar-sweetened beverage reduction, and Carla Girling as a predoctoral award holder.

I also contribute to the wider research infrastructure. As President of the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine from 2025 to 2027, I lead the national learned society for the discipline, having served on its executive committee in various roles since 2007. I am a member of the NIHR PGfAR sub-committee for qualitative and behavioural work, 2024 to 2027, and of the NIHR Postdoctoral Award funding committee, 2026 to 2027, reviewing about 15 to 20 applications a year across both. I sit on the CRUK Early Detection and Diagnosis Expert Review Panel and the Great Ormond Street Hospital Scientific Assessment Panel. I have examined MSc programmes at Queen's University Belfast, Birmingham City University and Brunel University, and served on the Data Monitoring Committee for the NIHR-funded CHESS trial. My editorial work includes board membership of the British Journal of Health Psychology since 2006, with action editor roles at PLOS ONE and the journal.

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A PDF copy is available on request. Write to me through the contact page.