Michaela is a Research Officer for the Early Years research theme and is based at Swansea University. She specialises in children’s health and wellbeing, in particular physical activity and play. She manages HAPPEN (the Health and Attainment of Pupils in a Primary Education Network) which has over 30,000 responses from primary-aged children across Wales. HAPPEN collects data on children’s health and wellbeing which can be used by schools to make individual approaches to their HWB plans. Michaela also works on several projects, such as RPlace (a mobile app to help young people to rate and review their local spaces to influence change), and leads a team of researchers advocating and empowering young people to have a say on matters that affect their HWB. Her current work also includes co-producing research priorities and interventions alongside young people.
