Samuel Nyman MSc, PhD

Dr. Samuel R. Nyman, MSc, Ph.D. is a Head in the Department of Psychology at the University of Winchester. Samuel’s interest in applied health psychology research with older people began in 2003 with his postgraduate study at the University of Southampton (MSc, Ph.D.). He then worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Reading on funded projects with older people (on the emotional support needs of those with vision loss and technology to prevent falls and promote independence). From 2010-2022 he was at Bournemouth University as a lecturer, senior lecturer, and then principal academic in psychology. At Bournemouth, he was honored to have been a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Career Development Fellow (January 2016 - December 2018). During this externally-funded fellowship, he was chief investigator for The TACIT Trial: Tai Chi for people with dementia, which tested the benefits of Tai Chi for people with dementia. Alongside he completed an MSc in Clinical Trials. He was then an NIHR Clinical Trials Fellow (January - August 2019) based in the Primary Care and Mental Health (PRINT) Clinical Trials Unit at UCL. Thereafter, Samuel took on several management and leadership roles at Bournemouth, culminating with being Head of the Clinical Research Unit that promoted and supported health and social care research in the region.

Samuel was the lead editor for The Palgrave Handbook of Ageing and Physical Activity Promotion (2018, pp.758), which has had over 37,000 downloads. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity (2020-), an international and multidisciplinary peer-reviewed scientific journal. Samuel is regularly consulted to review grant proposals submitted to national and international funding bodies and papers submitted to international scientific journals.

Samuel’s expertise is in applied health psychology with older people including people with dementia. More specifically, in the psychology of falls and their prevention, physical activity promotion, behavior change techniques, and randomized controlled trials including the use of qualitative methods. His work is interdisciplinary and applies theories from health psychology and the psychology of aging to the fields of geriatrics and gerontology.