Dr Heather Barry graduated from Queen’s University Belfast with a First Class Honours degree in Pharmacy in 2006, and a PhD in Pharmacy Practice in 2012. She subsequently held post-doctoral positions at the University of Exeter and Queen's University Belfast. She was appointed to a Lectureship in Pharmacy Practice in 2017 and promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2024.

Heather is a member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Heather's main research interests lie in service delivery and organisation of care within the primary care setting, with a focus on care of older people (particularly those with dementia and frailty), rational prescribing and medicines management. The primary care landscape is changing, linked to an ageing population, increasing multimorbidity and polypharmacy, declining patient satisfaction with access to services, and workforce issues. Heather is particularly interested in how pharmacists can be utilised more widely in order to meet the increasing pressures and challenges within general practice and primary care. She is experienced in both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, having utilised a variety of study designs in her research to date, and her research is highly interdisciplinary.

Heather has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications in leading international journals and has made numerous conference presentations on her research. She has held visiting scholar positions at McMaster University and the University of Waterloo in Canada. She is a member of the Society for Academic Primary Care and British Geriatrics Society, a member of the Editorial Board and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Pharmacy Practice, and a reviewer for more than 30 international journals.

Heather has experience of teaching both pharmacy and medicine undergraduate students. She has also delivered regional workshops and courses to pharmacists on behalf of the Northern Ireland Centre for Pharmacy Learning & Development (NICPLD). She currently teaches extensively across the MPharm undergraduate degree programme and postgraduate distance learning courses.