Dr Campbell's career began with clinical practice. After qualifying as a Registered General Nurse from St. Bartholomew's School of Nursing and Midwifery in 1991, she worked as a Staff Nurse in oncology. In 1995, she earned her BSc (Hons) in Community Nursing with First Class Honours from King's College London, followed by roles as a Health Visitor and District Nurse. Between 1995 and 1998, she worked as a Community Nurse in The Gambia, an experience that profoundly influenced her career. Working in resource-limited settings gave her invaluable insight into healthcare delivery challenges and ignited her passion for research that could improve health outcomes globally. This clinical background—spanning oncology, community nursing, and international health—continues to ground her research in real-world healthcare realities.
Her transition into research began in 1998 when she was awarded a fellowship by the Royal College of Nursing to train in evidence synthesis methods at Oxford. This launched over 27 years dedicated to advancing evidence synthesis methodology and its application to policy and practice. She joined Newcastle University as Research Associate in 2001, then moved to the University of Sheffield's School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) in 2007, where she spent 15 years developing her expertise. She pursued further academic qualifications while building her research career, earning an MPH with Distinction from the University of Sheffield in 2010, followed by her PhD in 2023.
In 2022, She was appointed Senior Lecturer in Evidence Synthesis at Newcastle University's Population and Health Sciences Institute. She has successfully secured over £5 million in research funding from organizations including NIHR, NICE, WHO, UNICEF, and Epilepsy Action. Her career has been characterized by commitment to methodological innovation and collaborative research. She founded and chair the Navigate Group, developing standards for mapping reviews and Evidence Gap Maps, and co-lead the Evidence Synthesis Hackathon.
She serves as Editor for the Campbell Collaboration's Children and Young People's Coordinating Group and hold positions on international methodological groups including the Scoping Methods Group. Currently, she leads international collaborations including a Horizon Europe-funded WHO consortium mapping evidence for cancer diagnosis and served as Co-chair of the Wellcome-funded Evidence Synthesis Infrastructure Collaborative. She is part of an £11 million ESRC-funded team developing AI-driven evidence synthesis methods and co-authored the INHTA White Paper on environmental sustainability within Health Technology Assessment.
Throughout her career, she has maintained commitment to capacity building, delivering training internationally and developing innovative teaching approaches. As Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she continues advancing both science and practice of evidence synthesis while mentoring the next generation of researchers.
In January 2026, she joined the Centre for Evidence and Implementation Science at the University of Birmingham to lead on their evidence synthesis work.