Research interests

• For nearly 20 years Lynn’s research has focused on understanding and responding to the needs of people living with and beyond cancer. She had led and collaborated on major research programmes in cancer survivorship/psychosocial oncology leading to widely published, practice changing findings that have underpinned the development of services to improve the outcomes of cancer patients.

Current research

As Deputy Director of the Centre for Psychosocial Research in Cancer: CentRIC+, Lynn collaborated on the development of a major psycho-oncology research programme at the University of Southampton, the HORIZONS Programme, funded by Macmillan Cancer Support. She was part of the team that developed RESTORE a web-based resource which aims to increase people's confidence to do things they want to do in spite of cancer related fatigue and collaborates on the ColoREctal Wellbeing (CREW) cohort study to explore recovery of health and wellbeing following primary treatment of colorectal cancer.

She also leads her own related programme of research focused on people living with advanced cancer. Lynn is Principal Investigator for the ENABLE study that aims to understand and characterise the importance of self-management support in people living with advanced cancer.

The CentRIC team work closely with people affected by cancer as Research Partners in the development and conduct of research projects.

Lynn is committed to research capacity building and developing psychosocial cancer care skills in the clinical workforce. For a number of years she has led work-based learning modules for CPD in cancer care.  As a result of the success of these modules a collaboration with the Wessex Cancer Alliance was established in 2022 to develop a cancer care pathway as part of the Professional Practice in Health | MSc | University of Southampton. Lynn is the module lead for Psychological skills in cancer care | HLTH6258 | University of Southampton and the academic lead for the modules.

She is also part of the module team for Palliative and End of Life Care | NPAD3007 | University of Southampton for third and fourth year nursing students.  Lynn teaches subject specialist content across other Health Sciences modules such as Global and Public Health | NPCG1028 | University of Southampton.

Lynn was the module lead for Co-ordinating Long-Term Care in Partnership (Dual Field) | NPCG2037 | University of Southampton for second year, dual field, MN nursing students. Lynn was an Academic Assessor and personal academic tutor for pre-registration nursing students until her move to the PGT programme.

Lynn supervises students across a number of programmes including the BSc, MN, and MSc pre-registration nursing programmes, the MSc Physiotherapy (Pre-Registration) and post-registration MSc programmes and at doctoral level.

Lynn graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a BSc (Hons) in Nursing. She worked clinically in palliative and HIV/AIDS care, completed her education as a mental health nurse and worked in acute mental health before undertaking her doctorate at the University of Edinburgh. Lynn has held academic positions at the Universities of Glasgow and Manchester. Lynn joined the Macmillan Survivorship Research Group (now CentRIC) in 2012 after completing an MRC post-doctoral fellowship in health services research and health of the public at the University of Manchester, to develop an intervention for the follow-up of lung cancer patients after primary treatment. 

Between 2020 and 2022 Lynn was appointed to the role of group manager within the pre-registration nursing team, leading a group of staff that integrate research and education. 

Lynn was a member of the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) and until 2023 she was the Chair of the Advanced Disease and End of Life Care Workstream & Member Living with and Beyond Cancer Executive Group. She was also a member of the NCRI Lung Cancer Group until 2023.