Personal Statement
Professor Shakila Thangaratinam is the Executive Dean of the Institute of Life Course and Medical Sciences, and the University Strategy Advisor for Global Engagement and Partnerships. She is a Professor of Women's Health, NIHR Senior Investigator, Consultant Obstetrician, and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She leads a nationally and globally recognised research portfolio, with leadership experience spanning Higher Education Institutions and the NHS, and expertise in capacity building, teaching and mentoring, industry engagement, and outreach.

Prof Thangaratinam leads large-scale, interdisciplinary global and national collaborative networks funded by MRC, NIHR, WHO, NHMRC (Australia), and previously the EU and major Charities – securing over £70M in research income and engaging partners across 40+ countries. She leads the women's health theme in the NIHR Northwest Coast ARC (Applied Research Collaboration) and is the Chair of national NIHR Collaborative Action Group on Health of Women. Her research has been widely cited in shaping national and global guidelines, including on covid-19 in pregnancy, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, pulse oximetry in newborns, and epilepsy in pregnancy. As Consultant Obstetrician at the Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust, she cares for pregnant women.

Previously, Prof Thangaratinam established and led two WHO Collaborating Centres for Women’s Health - first in London and then in Birmingham - and founded the Barts Research Centre for Women’s Health (BARC, London), and led women’s health themes within NIHR BRC and Patient Safety Research Centres in Birmingham. Within the NHS, she held the role of R&D Director for Women's Health at NHS trusts in Birmingham and London. She founded the Dame Hilda Lloyd Network in the West Midlands and the Katherine Twining Network in East London – regional academic-clinical platforms - to nurture the next generation of researchers and medical and midwifery students. Over the last five years, she has mentored over 40 medical student researchers and supervised 11 postgraduates to completion of their PhD/MD degrees. She established dedicated patient and public involvement groups for women’s health - Katie’s team and The Hildas in the UK and the Equal Voices Alliance (EVA) across 15 countries - to embed the voices of women and girls within research.

Research Overview
Prof Thangaratinam's research focuses on improving the health of women and their babies in the UK and globally. Through clinical trials, state-of-the-art evidence synthesis like individual participant data meta-analysis, living systematic reviews, network metanalysis, and diagnostic and prognostic research, she addresses the major causes of maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity such as prediction and prevention of complications like gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, seizures in mothers with epilepsy; lifestyle interventions like diet and physical activity; maternity safety and addressing race and ethnic inequalities; and public health problems like obesity and multimorbidity.

Almost all her research is built on extensive multidisciplinary partnerships spanning regions and countries. She leads global research networks such as IPPIC (International Prediction of Complications, 21 countries, 5.5M pregnancies; 100M data points), i-WIP (International Weight management in Pregnancy; 16 countries; 60K pregnancies) and PregCOV-19 (Pregnancy and Covid-19) that provided living databases and platforms to maximise research efficiency and minimise research waste. Within the UK, many of her clinical trials involve 30-50 maternity units, with partnerships spanning NHS Trusts and Universities. She leads the women's health theme in the NIHR Northwest Coast ARC (Applied Research Collaboration) and is the Chair of national NIHR Collaborative Action Group on Health of Women. More than 130 policy documents cite her work, which have directly contributed to national and global recommendations.

279 full papers in peer-reviewed journals; h-index 72; 34169 citations (accessed 19 Feb 2026)Google ScholarORCID Thangaratinam