Rate My Professor Anne-Sophie Darlington

Professor Anne-Sophie Darlington is Professor of Child and Family Psychological Health within Health Sciences at the University of Southampton, holding a Personal Chair. She obtained a Master’s degree in Psychology, specialising in Developmental Psychology, from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and a PhD in Health Psychology from the University of Durham. Her career trajectory includes several years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Universities of Exeter, Sheffield, and Durham. She then spent seven years in the Department of Medical Psychology at the Erasmus Medical Centre, the largest research hospital in the Netherlands, initially as a senior researcher and later as a lecturer, focusing on quality of life and coping. Upon returning to the United Kingdom, she worked in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton as well as the University of Oxford, before assuming her current role.

Darlington’s research programme focuses on measuring and improving the quality of life of children and young people with chronic illnesses, including cancer. Central questions address how these children and their parents adjust, what interventions can support families and enhance quality of life, and optimal methods for measuring outcomes such as quality of life. She has developed a theoretical framework on parental coping and maintains a strong international track record in predictors of adjustment, patient-reported outcome measurement, intervention development, and paediatric palliative care, particularly understanding parental coping when facing a child’s imminent death. She chairs the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Group and previously chaired its Executive Committee, contributing to the development and refinement of health-related quality of life questionnaires for oncology clinical trials. As principal or co-investigator, she has secured funding from national bodies such as the Brain Tumour Charity and British Renal Society, and international sources like the EORTC. She mentors clinicians through NIHR fellowships and other programmes. Notable publications include 'Development of a Core Outcome Set for Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer' (Lancet Oncology, 2025), 'Development of a health-related quality of life tool for adolescents and young adults with cancer' (JAMA Network Open, 2025), and 'Knowledge representation of a multi-centre adolescent and young adult cancer infrastructure; development of the STRONG AYA knowledge graph' (Journal of Clinical Oncology Clinical Cancer Informatics, 2026). She leads active projects on quality of life modules for adolescents and young adults with cancer, inequities in end-of-life care, and more, with 144 publications in total.