LAB FUNDING 

We are grateful for support from

• Aligning Science Across Parkinson's and the Michael J. Fox Foundation
• Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Resarch Council
• Christ Church College
• Medical Research Council
• Parkinson's UK
• Wellcome

My laboratory focuses on understanding dopamine neurotransmission in the brain, particularly within the basal ganglia. We seek to improve understanding of the mechanisms regulating dopamine transmission and their dysfunction in neurodegenerative and other brain disorders, particularly Parkinson's disease and addictions, to gain insights into disease aetiology and therapeutic avenues. We are a founding group of the Oxford Parkinson's Disease Centre (OPDC).

I studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, followed by a DPhil at the University of Oxford Department of Pharmacology as a Mary Goodger Scholar. I was awarded postdoctoral E.P. Abraham Junior Research Fellowships from Keble College and then St. Cross College Oxford, followed by a Beit Memorial Prize Fellowship, and a Paton Research Fellowship at the University Department of Pharmacology, Oxford. My Fellowships involved stints at New York University Departments of Physiology & Biophysics and Neurosurgery, with Drs Margaret Rice and Charles Nicholson, and in the lab of Dr R. Mark Wightman at the University of North Carolina Department of Chemistry. I joined the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics in Oxford in 2006 through a joint appointment as University Lecturer and Tutor for Medicine at the college Christ Church. In 2014, I became Professor of Neuroscience.

I am current President of the International Society for Monitoring Molecules in Neuroscience, co-founder of the inaugural Dopamine Society, Member of Council for the International Basal Ganglia Society, and serve on the Editorial Advisory Board for ACS Chemical Neuroscience, and on the inaugural Editorial Boards for Addiction Neuroscience and npj Parkinson's Disease. I have previously served stints in Parkinson's UK College of Experts, as Associate Editor at npj Parkinson's Disease, and as Chair of the 17th International Conference on Monitoring Molecules in Neuroscience held in 2018. I am co-Editor with colleague Prof Mark Walton of The Handbook of Dopamine, a new defining volume in the field published in August 2025.