Meet the team

Professor Ellen Townsend

Professor Townsend is co-director of Connect Nottingham. She co-developed the 'pop-up' Café Connect model on which Connect Nottingham is based with funding from the Wellcome Trust with Sensory Scientist Professor Joanne Hort (now at Massey University, New Zealand).

Ellen leads the Self-Harm Research Group and is a widely published expert in participatory research, especially in the fields of adolescent mental health, self-harm and suicide prevention. She has a history of leading successful large scale multidisciplinary programmes such as the £4M UKRI Digital Youth Programme. Digital Youth is developing scalable tools for young people with mental health needs, including the CaTS-App (a collaborative assessment tool to support young people who self-harm).

Dr Rebecca Ford

Dr Rebecca Ford is co-director of Connect Nottingham along with Prof Ellen Townsend. She leads the Sensory and Consumer Science research group at the University of Nottingham. 

Becki’s research is focused on exploring multisensory perception. Our expert sensory panel are rigorously trained to quantify sensory attributes of products in a very controlled way and our labs at Sutton Bonington Campus are optimised for this purpose. However, when it comes to consumer sensory science, our research group are passionate about ‘Research in the wild’ approaches which focuses on testing products in ‘normal’ consumption settings. Where this is not possible, we are pioneering the use of digital techniques to immerse consumers in realistic consumption contexts.

We are excited that Connect Nottingham will offer us a café, restaurant, shop and immersive room to realise our long-standing ambition for ‘research in the wild’.​