Sheila Payne is a health psychologist with a background in nursing. She holds an emeritus chair at the International Observatory on End of Life Care at Lancaster University. She is a visiting professor at the University of Ulster. During her career, she established and managed three research groups; firstly the Health Research Group at the University of Southampton (1996-2000), secondly the Palliative and End of Life Care Research Group, University of Sheffield (2003-2006) and latterly the International Observatory on End of Life Care, Lancaster University (2009-2014). Sheila was the president of the European Association of Palliative Care (2011-2015) and has a long track record in palliative care research and scholarship. Her research focuses on palliative and end of life care for older people. She currently holds two European Commission Framework 7 program funded major international grants and has supervised over 35 Ph.D. students. She has published widely in academic and professional journals and published 13 books, with another book in preparation.