Charlotte Clark is Professor of Environmental Epidemiology in the Population Health Research Institute. Her research focuses on how physical and psychosocial environments affect physical and mental health across the lifecourse. Charlotte has an international reputation for conducting robust policy relevant research on the effects of environmental noise on physical and mental health, wellbeing, and quality of life. She currently leads the Department for Transport ANNE study (Aviation Night Noise Effects), the first UK study of the effects of aviation noise on sleep for over 30 years. She also leads a study funded by Heathrow Airport, managed by the NIHR, examining the effect of a school noise insulation programme on children's health and learning. She has written several influential systematic reviews synthesising the evidence for noise effects on health for the World Health Organization and Defra. She has managed large-scale adolescent epidemiological cohort studies (Relachs, ORiEL), as well as analysis of national cohort data such as the 1958 cohort. Charlotte is President of the International Commission on Biological Effects on Noise (ICBEN) and a member of the Civil Aviation Authority Environmental Sustainability Panel.
Charlotte is Institute Director of the Population Health Research Institute, at St George's, University of London.
Charlotte gained her PhD in Psychology from the University of Surrey in 2001, and was appointed as a researcher in the Centre for Psychiatry at Queen Mary, University of London in 2002 where she worked on large-scale epidemiological studies, including the RANCH study and the RELACHs study. Over 15 years she was promoted to Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Reader in Environmental and Mental Health Epidemiology, undertaking research on a range of projects examining the effects of noise on health; predictors of mental health across the lifecourse; and the effect of urban regeneration on mental health.
In 2017 Charlotte moved to Arup, a consulting firm, where she led a public health and social science team undertaking research, evidence synthesis and health impact assessment for urban regeneration, transport and large infrastructure schemes such as Heathrow Airport and High Speed 2 railway.
In 2021, Charlotte joined St George's, University of London to continue her research activities relating to noise and health and lifecourse mental health. She is recognised for her expertise in the field of environmental noise effects on health (mental health, wellbeing, cardiovascular health, children's learning) and has advised the World Health Organization, DEFRA, the UK Airport Commission on the public health impact of environmental noise, and the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee enquiry.
She is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She has completed a 6-year term on the Research Funding Committee for the National Institute of Health Research Public Health Research Programme. She was project lead for the revision of ISO/TS 15666 - the international standard for assessing noise annoyance in local communities.
Charlotte undertakes a range of international consultancy activities including environmental and health impact assessments for large infrastructure projects, as well as legal cases relating to environmental noise exposure (e.g., wind turbine noise, railway noise, aircraft noise).
In 2024 Charlotte was involved in the Radio 4 Inside Health episode 'Can noise harm our health'.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001xvnb
Current funding
Aviation Night Noise Effects (Department for Transport) (2022-2025) – leading £1.7M research study examining aviation night noise effects on subjective and objective sleep disturbance to inform policy. This includes a survey of annoyance and self-reported sleep disturbance for 4,000 residents to derive national exposure-response relationships.
https://www.sgul.ac.uk/about/our-institutes/population-health/projects/aviation-night-noise-effects-study
Heathrow School Noise Insulation Study (Heathrow Airport/NIHR)) (2024-2027) – leading £750K research study examining the effect of Heathrow’s noise insulation scheme of schools on children’s learning and wellbeing.
EU Horizon 2020 Equal-Life project - partner in this European project which is examining the effects of the physical and social environment across childhood on mental health and cognition (www.equal-life.eu/en/project).
A feasibility before and after study evaluating the health and quality of life impacts of Heathrow's Residential Noise Insulation Scheme.
Past funding
Charlotte has held Principal Investigator roles on grants from UK Research Councils (MRC, ESRC), government bodies (NIHR, DEFRA, DWP), the European Union, and non-government organisations (World Health Organization, Department for Transport). Charlotte has collaborated nationally and internationally on large scale epidemiological cohort studies involving primary data collection (EU RANCH Study; NIHR ORiEL Study; the Relachs study) and secondary analysis of UK cohorts (e.g. 1958 Birth Cohort; Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Surveys, ALSPAC, Biobank).
Previous research activities involve the ORiEL study (Olympic Regeneration in East London) - a study evaluating the impact of urban regeneration associated with the London 2012 Olympics on the well-being of East London adolescents. She has undertaken research on the National Noise Attitude Survey 2012 and the Survey of Noise Attitudes 2013 and also co-directed the Framework 7 European Network on Noise and Health (ENNAH). She was part of the Uncertain Futures: managing late career transitions and extended working life project which examined predictors of employment in later-life.
- Clark, C., Gjestland, T., Lavia, L., Notley, H., Michaud, D. S., & Morinaga, M. (2021). Assessing community noise annoyance: A review of two decades of the international technical specification ISO/TS 15666:2003. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 150, 3362.
- Torija, A. J., & Clark, C. (2021). A Psychoacoustic Approach to Building Knowledge about Human Response to Noise of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Int J Environ Res Public Health, 18(2).
- Clark, C., Head, J., van Kamp, I., van Kempen, E., Haines, M., & Stansfeld, S. (2021). A meta-analysis of the association of aircraft noise at school on children's reading comprehension and psychological health for use in Health Impact Assessment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 101646.
- Kupcikova, Z., Fecht, D., Ramakrishnan, R., Clark, C., & Cai, Y. S. (2021). Road traffic noise and cardiovascular disease risk factors in UK Biobank. European Heart Journal, 42(21), 2072-2084.
- Clark, C., Crumpler, C. , & Notley, H. (2020). Evidence for environmental noise effects on health for the United Kingdom policy context: A systematic review of the effects of environmental noise on mental health, wellbeing, quality of life, cancer, dementia, birth, reproductive outcomes, and cognition. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(393).
- Clark, C., & Paunović, K. (2018). WHO Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region: Systematic review of the evidence on the effects of environmental noise on quality of life, wellbeing and mental health. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(11), 2400.
- Clark, C., & Paunović, K. (2018). WHO Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region: A systematic review on environmental noise and cognition. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15, 285.