Dr Linda Biesty

Dr Linda Biesty
Deputy Director

Linda is the new Deputy Director of Evidence Synthesis Ireland. Linda is also co-lead of the QES strand within ESI, teaching faculty and a member of the steering committee.

Linda is senior lecturer in Midwifery at the School of Nursing & Midwifery, University of Galway. She holds an MSc Midwifery, Post Graduate Diploma in Clinical Sciences Education (with distinction) & PhD from Trinity College Dublin. A midwife since 1997, Linda has practised midwifery in London, Australia and Ireland, in hospital and home/community settings within obstetric-led and midwife-led models of maternity care.  She has 18 years experience in midwifery education, 12 of those as a university lecturer facilitating teaching & learning across undergraduate and postgraduate education.

Linda’s research is largely within the field of pregnancy, childbirth and maternity care including ethnographic exploration of the culture of birth and systematic reviews of maternity care interventions. Linda is an Early Career Investigator with experience in both leading and participating in evidence synthesis work. She is the lead author on two Cochrane Systematic Reviews and a member of four other teams undertaking systematic reviews within the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Review Group and the Methodology Review Group. Her qualitative evidence synthesis portfolio lies in advancing the synthesis on recruitment to trials in healthcare and recruitment of pregnant women to trials specifically within the maternity care setting. Linda currently supports students at MSc and PhD level undertaking the synthesis of qualitative work. Her initial training in qualitative evidence synthesis was facilitated by Professor Terese Bondas and Professor Barbara Paterson, pioneers in advancing the method.