Maria is a research officer within Care Policy and Evaluation Centre (CPEC – Department of Health Policy LSE) and she is teaching on various undergraduate and MSc courses at the Department of Social Policy (LSE), including Health and Social Care Policy, International Social and Public Policy and Understanding Policy Research (advanced).
In addition to her research post, she is currently doing a PhD at the Department of Health Policy (LSE), and she has been awarded a full scholarship by LSE. Her PhD is focusing on financing long-term care and on reducing inequalities in accessing services for older adults.
During the past years, she has collaborated as researcher and consultant on various projects with World Bank, WHO, European Commission. In addition, she has been called as an external expert on the EU High-Level Group on the future of social protection and of welfare state in the EU (DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion).
She was previously a visiting academic at the University of Oxford (Oxford Institute of Population Ageing), and she worked as an advisor for Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) and as a researcher at King’s College London (Global Observatory for Ageing and Dementia Care). Maria has also worked as a researcher and project manager at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) and the Greek National School of Public Health and as a director of a day care centre for people with dementia.
She is co-author of the World Alzheimer Report 2016 on “Improving healthcare for people living with dementia: coverage, quality, and costs now and in the future” and of various reports published by Public Health England. She is participating in many research projects related to dementia, reducing inequalities and improving healthcare services for older adults.
She has an MSc (with merit) in International Health Policy (LSE), an MSc in Psychology & Counselling (University of Sheffield), and a BSc in Psychology (Middlesex University).
Her main research interests are welfare states; international social policy and healthcare; inequalities in accessing health and social care, ageing, health economics; financing of long-term care systems for older adults; dementia; community based services for older adults.