Dr Emma Cunningham

Dr Emma Cunningham is a Clinical Lecturer in Ageing in the Centre for Public Health at Queen's University Belfast and a Consultant Geriatrician in the Belfast Trust.

 

Dr Cunningham graduated from Queen’s University Belfast in 2004. She undertook junior medical roles in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Uganda before beginning Specialty Training in Geriatric and General Medicine in Northern Ireland in 2008. Dr Cunningham took time out of programme to complete her three-year PhD training from August 2012 – August 2015, graduating from QUB with her PhD in December 2015. Dr Cunningham was awarded an Academic Clinical Lectureship at QUB, then a Clinical Research Fellowship with Alzheimer’s Research UK before being appointed as a substantive Clinical Lecturer in QUB in 2019.

 

Dr Cunningham’s funded research interests centre on the interfaces and overlaps between delirium, dementia-causing diseases, frailty and perioperative health. Dr Cunningham is an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute. She is currently secretary of the European Delirium Association and Chair of ISTAART's Perioperative Cognition and Delirium Professional Interest Area. She is on the editorial board of the Delirium and Delirium Communications journals.

 

In her clinical role Dr Cunningham runs weekly memory and brain health clinics, a regional neurodegenerative multidisciplinary meeting and a new lumbar puncture clinic to sample cerebrospinal fluid for dementia-related analyses. Dr Cunningham also does general geriatric on-call.