Dr. Eleanor Main

Biography

Professor Eleanor Main has worked at Great Ormond Street Hospital and UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health for 29 years, focusing on clinical physiotherapy and postgraduate education research. She qualified in South Africa with a BSc in Physiotherapy from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1988 and completed a BA in English and Psychology at the University of South Africa in 1991, an MSc in research methods at King's College London in 1995, and a PhD in paediatric respiratory physiology at UCL in 2001. Her clinical background is primarily in paediatric respiratory care and neurophysiotherapy, with experience at Red Cross Children's Hospital in Cape Town and Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in London. She was appointed Lecturer in Physiotherapy Research at UCL in 2001, became a Senior Lecturer in 2007, and was promoted to Professor of Physiotherapy in 2015. In 2011, she was awarded a Fellowship by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy for her significant contributions to education, teaching, and learning in cardiorespiratory paediatric physiotherapy. As Programme Director for Postgraduate Physiotherapy at UCL since 2005, she has supervised 10 PhD students and over 100 MSc project dissertations. Her primary research interests relate to outcome measures and clinical efficacy studies in physiotherapy, resulting in more than 130 peer-reviewed publications and attracting £3.2 million in grant funding, thus advancing the principles of assessment and management of children requiring physiotherapy.

Research Interests

Experience