Life Stories... With Dr Gemma Parry

Gemma is dual qualified in Sport Rehabilitation and Physiotherapy having completed her BSc and MSc in Sport Rehabilitation at the Universities of Middlesex and Salford respectively. She completed her Pre-Reg MSc from the University of Birmingham, following an unplanned career change from Performing Arts to Science in her early twenties. Despite never intending on or planning for a career route in physiotherapy and sport, she went on to be the lead physiotherapist to GB Short Track Speed Skating at the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics, for Team GB during EYOF in Finland and most recently Team England Wheelchair Basketball in her home city of Birmingham during the 2022 commonwealth games. Having previously occupied positions with GB Boxing through the English Institute of Sport, Birmingham City FC, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Bromsgrove School and Manchester United Soccer Schools. Currently, Gemma operates as a “pracademic”, through clinical work for the English Institute of Sport as a Senior Physiotherapist delivering the speciality of generalism across Multi-Sport Olympic and Paralympic programmes, and research/lecturer across MSc and BSc programmes. Following the recent completion of her PhD, which looked to establish the validity and reliability of MSK profiling tools with the specific aim of deepening understanding of how movement quality changes during growth and maturation within elite and non-elite multi-sport adolescent populations. Youth athlete development and Youth health continues to be a passion-project for Gemma as she looks to further build and continue within this space through lectures, post-doc research and conference delivery.