CHE Spotlight: Tracy Dancer
Posted on Monday 9 March 2026
What was your career route to CHE?
After several years working in Sports Development and after emigrating to Australia I started my career in higher education at the University of Adelaide in South Australia. My roles whilst there ranged from advising prospective students and outreach work at local primary schools, to events management and managing health and wellbeing projects.
Upon returning to the UK I was lucky enough to secure a College role at the University of York. Since then I have worked in various areas of the University, with a couple of secondments, including what was then the Research Strategy and Policy Office, PCMIS (a wholly owned subsidiary of the University that specialises in patient case management systems), knowledge transfer and also in Computer Science and the School of Physics, Engineering and Technology. This led perfectly into my current role of Project Manager for Rowena Jacob's NIHR funded Support2Work Project.
My advice from my time at York? If there is a secondment opportunity that interests you, apply! You never know where it could lead.
What have you been working on since you came to CHE and what are you currently doing?
I started in CHE on the first day of the Support2Work Project post award. As such, I have been able to influence and guide the production of many of the key documents and processes necessary for a project of this size, such as our Authorship & Dissemination Policy, Project Management Team Terms of Reference and various project management tools. I have also managed the setting up of our Service Experts Advisory Panel (SEAP), made up of seven service users and four staff from the Employment Adviser service in NHS Talking therapies as well as our Policy Experts Advisory Panel (PEAP) made up of 10 influential and knowledgeable members.
Coming up in the next few months we will deliver an annual progress report to NIHR, a Communications Plan for the project and determine how we can creatively maximise the benefits of having such a great SEAP, for the service users themselves, for the project and for the community more broadly. I am also a member of the CHE Green Impact team and we will be submitting our project in a couple of months.
What are your future plans in CHE?
There are a couple of years left on the Support2Work project. Much of the work I am and will be doing is relatively new to me so I am always learning and being challenged. It is a wonderful opportunity to develop myself in this area and that is enough for me to be getting on with at the moment! I can say, from my experience in CHE to date, that I would love to have the opportunity to stay in CHE and take on another project when this one ends.