Connection profile

Nick de Viggiani

About: Having graduated in Geography from the University of Sheffield in 1987, Nick firstly trained as a Registered General Nurse in London, and subsequently completed his MSc degree in Health Promotion at the University of Manchester in 1991. His growing interest in health inequalities led him into a career in health promotion, working with Wigan Area Health Authority as a Health Promotion Officer for HIV and AIDS. In 1993, he was appointed as a Lecturer in Health Promotion at Liverpool John Moores University, and since 1998 has worked at UWE Bristol as a Senior Lecturer in Public Health. In 2003, Nick completed his PhD with the University of Bristol, having completed an ethnography involving men in prison, exploring prison masculinities as determinants of health. This led to various funded research projects involving people in the criminal and youth justice systems, including a Big Lottery funded three-year study involving young offenders, undertaken in partnership with a music charity. Much of Nick’s research in the criminal justice health sector has involved developing relations with regional and national stakeholders across public, private and third sector agencies, and with colleagues at other UK universities. He is particularly interested in working with hard-to-reach groups, sometimes described as ‘challenging’ or ‘vulnerable’, including male and female young offenders, older prisoners, sex offenders and foreign national prisoners, across different provider organisations. A key objective of Nick’s work has been to explore, explain and tackle health and social inequality. His current research is seeking to involve people in the criminal and youth justice systems in peer led research mentoring and advocacy.​