Dr Anne-Marie Barron is a Director of Leigh & Barron Consulting Ltd, and has worked as a researcher for over 20 years.  She achieved a PhD in 1989 at the University of Wales, Cardiff, looking at the impact of social interaction on learning and cognitive achievement.  She is a Chartered Psychologist and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society.  She was a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds when she co founded a research practice, Leigh & Barron Consulting, with Dr Alan Leigh in 1994.  Following her work at the University of Leeds, Anne-Marie was made an Honorary Research Fellow and is a member of the University’s Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Anne-Marie is a research consultant and project manager for a variety of organisations.  With the company she has undertaken research and development projects for a number of national government departments and industry/sectoral organisations, covering Education, Training and Development, Advice Guidance and Counselling, Museums Galleries and Archives, Publishing, Engineering, Manufacturing, Logistics, IT, and Management.  Anne-Marie has been coordinating a number of projects incorporating sector analysis (often known as occupational mapping).  This involves conducting original research and consolidating existing information from a variety of sources, eg sector organisations, national statistics and practitioners.  Using this information a sector can position itself within the national economic framework and develop strategies for building and branding its products and services.  She recently completed an analysis of the publishing sector that looked at all aspects of publishing: books, magazines, newspapers and journals, and led the sector analysis phase of the Supply Chain Management and International Trade & Services Project.

  Anne-Marie led a Department of Health initiative to produce competences for Research Ethics Committees.  This work changed the process of the ethical review in this area and was used until it was superseded in 2004 by the implementation of the European Union Directive on ‘Good Clinical Practice in the conduct of clinical trials on medicinal products for human use’.  For Skills for Health (the Sector Skills Council for Health, funded by the Department for Employment & Skills and the Department of Health), Anne-Marie produced competence guidelines to support the National Service Frameworks for those working with Children, Older People, and people with long term neurological conditions.

Anne-Marie is co-author with Professor Simon Holdaway of a book based on a Home Office funded project, Resigners? The Experience of Black and Asian Police Officers, which has been published by Macmillan.