Judith Holliday

Biography

Judith Holliday is Deputy Director of Research at Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust, where she leads a multidisciplinary research team delivering clinical and applied health research across Pinderfields, Pontefract and Dewsbury hospitals and the Trust's community adult services. She is Principal Investigator for Born and Bred in Wakefield (BaBi Wakefield), a longitudinal birth cohort study linking routinely collected health, social and educational data, with over 10,000 participants recruited.

She is Operational Director of the Mid Yorkshire spoke of the Bradford and West Yorkshire NIHR Commercial Research Delivery Centre (CRDC), leading commercial clinical research delivery. At Mid Yorkshire she has led the development of CRIB, a £1.5m NIHR capital award (NIHR502748, 25/25 - 28/29) to establish a modular research unit to expand the Trust's capacity for clinical and commercial research.

Judith is the founder Chair of Wakefield Research Hub, established in 2021. She formerly chaired the ACORN research capacity building group of the NIHR Yorkshire and Humber Applied Research Collaboration (2022 to 2026) and the NIHR Yorkshire and Humber R&D Operations Group (2019 to 2022). During an earlier secondment to the NIHR CLAHRC Yorkshire and Humber she co-produced VICTOR, a tool for capturing the impact of undertaking research in the NHS.

She has recently completed a Wellcome Medical Humanities Practice Research Fellowship at Durham University's Institute for Medical Humanities (2025-2026) and is a part-time doctoral candidate at the University of Salford, where her research examines the under-representation of women from socioeconomically deprived areas in longitudinal cohort research. She completed the NIHR/Ashridge Business School Leadership Development Programme (2016 to 2018).

Judith holds an MA in Social and Public Policy from the University of Leeds and a BA (Hons) in English Literature from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, together with a Level 7 Certificate in Strategic Management and Leadership Practice from the Chartered Management Institute and a postgraduate module in research ethics from the University of Oxford.

Publications

Woodall, J., Homer, C., Freeman, C., South, J., Cooke, J., Holliday, J., Hartley, A., Mullen, S. and Stafford, B. (2024) Evidence-based decision-making in a climate of political expediency: insights from local government. Perspectives in Public Health, 146(3), pp. 128–134. https://doi.org/10.1177/17579139241256879

Holliday, J. et al. (2023) Organisational benefits of undertaking research in healthcare: an approach to uncover impact. BMC Research Notes. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-023-06526-5

Using the Making Visible the ImpaCT Of Research (VICTOR) questionnaire to evaluate the benefits of a fellowship programme for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals (2023). Nurse Researcher. https://doi.org/10.7748/nr.2023.e1864

Exploring the impact of a housing support service on hospital discharge: a mixed-methods process evaluation in two UK hospital trusts (2023). Health & Social Care in the Community. https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/4027277

Learning from the challenges of undertaking an evaluation of a multi-partner housing support initiative delivered within a hospital setting (2022). Public Health in Practice. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhip.2022.100333

Homer, C., Woodall, J., Freeman, C. et al. (2022) Changing the culture: a qualitative study exploring research capacity in local government. BMC Public Health, 22, 1341. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13758-w

Jones, N.L., Cooke, J. and Holliday, J. (2021) Making occupational therapy research visible: amplifying and elevating the contribution and impacts. British Journal of Occupational Therapy. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308022620988473

Ugail, H. et al. (2019) MotiVar: motivating weight loss through a personalised avatar. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on SKIMA, IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/SKIMA47702.2019.8982405