Sheri Oduola is a mental health nurse, social/psychiatric epidemiologist, and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Sheri gained a BSc in Mental Health Nursing at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, King’s College London. She then completed an MSc in Health Services and Population Research and a PhD in Psychiatric Epidemiology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London.  

Clinically, she worked primarily with people living with psychotic disorders in inpatient and community settings.  

Before joining UEA, Sheri established and led two NIHR-funded research support infrastructures at the South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) and KCL: (1) the Consent for Contact Research Register- a searchable register through which researchers can identify potential participants who have given broad consent to be contacted for research studies, and (2) the Feasibility and Acceptability Support Team for Researchers (FAST-R) - which offers fast and easy access to people with experience of mental health problems and carers, who have been specially trained to advise on research proposals and documentation.  

Sheri's research focuses on social factors that produce inequalities in the burdens of mental ill-health, mental healthcare, and long-term outcomes of severe mental illness in diverse populations (e.g., ethnic, gender minority groups and rural communities). She uses a mixed-methods approach to make sense of complex health inequalities among marginalised groups, drawing on epidemiological techniques in electronic health records and qualitative approaches to explain why these disparities occur.  

Sheri has been involved in several mixed-methods and epidemiological research projects on psychosis and severe mental illness, including CRIS-FEP (supported by NIHR BRC Maudsley), MEDIATE (funded by NIHR – PDG), and RESOLVE (funded by NIHR - HSD&R). She led the NIHR-funded UEA Mental Health Research Development Award project, which brought together key stakeholders and conducted extensive scoping work to identify mental health needs and priorities in Norfolk and Suffolk, particularly in rural, coastal, and underserved communities.    

• Epidemiology, and social influences of the aetiology, course and outcome of psychosis and severe mental illness
• Pathways to care and health service utilisation.
• Public mental health interventions
• Physical health outcomes in psychosis
• Young people's mental health
• At-risk-mental-state psychosis
• Health disparities in minority groups
• Mental health in rural and coastal areas

Sheri supervises PhD and ClinPsyD students. She welcomes students interested in using epidemiological techniques (including electronic health records) and mixed methods for their PhD research.  

As a Course Director, Sheri designed, established, and led the first pre-registration MSc in Mental Health Nursing at UEA, enrolling the first cohort in 2019/20. She led the pre-registration MSc Mental Health Nursing course from 2019/23, which is a flagship School of Health Sciences course.  

Her teaching interests include: 

Quantitative research methods 

Ethnicity and mental illness 

Sociology of mental illness 

Psychoses 

She currently teaches the following modules:  

HSC7201X – Principles and Practice of Health Research 1  

HSC7204X- Principles and Practice of Health Research 2  

HSC7206X – MSc Nursing Dissertation  

Module Lead: Quantitative Research Methods (HSC7005B), MSc Global Public Health 

Sheri is a Visiting Lecturer and Researcher at King’s College London, SLaM Biomedical Research Centre and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Trust. And a member of the Mental Health Nurse Academics UK.

• Epidemiology
• Clinical informatics
• Psychosis and severe mental illness
• Pathways to care and health service utilisation.
• Public mental health interventions
• Physical health outcomes in psychosis
• Young people's mental health
• Health disparities in minority groups
• Mental health in rural and coastal areas