Dr Claire Feeley

Who Dr Claire Feeley is

Dr Claire Feeley is a Senior Lecturer in Midwifery at King's College London's Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care, where she leads the Midwifery and Maternal Health Research Group. She qualified as a midwife in 2011, earned an MSc in 2015 and a PhD in 2019, and has worked clinically across all areas and settings of midwifery. Her research specialisms include physiological birth across the risk spectrum, water immersion, freebirthing, and midwives supporting out-of-guidelines care, examined through a sociocultural-political lens. She has published peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and a monograph, and has received NIHR funding as Principal Investigator for research into high-quality maternity care. She is known for calling for a return to authentic evidence-based maternity practice and for challenging what she terms 'guideline-centred care'.

References for this biography

1. 1.Claire Feeley | King's College London — Confirms current role as Senior Lecturer in Midwifery at KCL, research specialisms, and leadership of the Midwifery and Maternal Health Research Group
2. 2.Dr Claire Feeley – personal professional website — Confirms qualifications (midwife 2011, MSc 2015, PhD 2019), research focus, and KCL affiliation
3. 3.Skilled Heartfelt Midwifery Practice: Safe, Relational Care for Alternative Physiological Births | Springer Nature — Confirms published monograph, clinical and research background, and her personal website URL
4. 4.Learning from Beacon Sites for Optimal Maternity Care: A Safety I/Safety II Approach | King's College London — Confirms NIHR Programme Development Grant as Principal Investigator, funding amount, and period
5. 5.Evidence-based maternity care: looking back, to move forward | King's College London — Confirms her public advocacy position on guideline-centred care and evidence-based maternity practice
6. 6.Claire Feeley – King's College London research portal — Confirms peer-reviewed publication record including journal articles and book chapters, and NIHR Principal Investigator roles

Notable achievements

• Principal Investigator on NIHR Programme Development Grant (NIHR206404) 'Learning from Beacon Sites for Optimal Maternity Care: A Safety I/Safety II Approach', funded at £155,110.94 (September 2024 – November 2025) Source ↗
• Published monograph 'Skilled Heartfelt Midwifery Practice: Safe, Relational Care for Alternative Physiological Births' (Springer, 2023), arising from her PhD research on midwives supporting physiological births in the NHS Source ↗
• Lead of the Midwifery and Maternal Health Research Group at King's College London Source ↗

What Dr Claire Feeley has said

• “Dr Claire Feeley, midwife and researcher, will revisit the notion of 'guideline-centre care', the worst of both worlds for all concerned, to call for a return to authentic evidence-based practice as a key solution to improving maternity care.”

  Senior Lecturer in Midwifery at King's College London · Maternity & neonatal · 30 Sept 2026 · Evidence-based maternity care: looking back, to move forward ↗

• “While this report doesn't reveal any new findings and is still collecting evidence, it has taken a wider structural lens which situates the day to day failings of maternity services in both the hands of government - ringfenced funding is urgently needed and Trust leadership”

  Senior Lecturer in Midwifery, Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care · Maternity & neonatal · 30 Sept 2026 · King's academics respond to Baroness Amos' interim report on maternity services ↗

• “women were sometimes choosing free birth as a 'back-up plan' because they did not wish to give birth in hospital. 'What my colleagues tell me is that in areas which are doing really well with their home birth teams, there's hardly any freebirthing'”

  senior lecturer in midwifery at King's College London · Hospital discharge / bed-blocking · 27 Aug 2026 · NHS directed pregnant women to controversial Free Birth Society via charity ↗

Where Dr Claire Feeley has been quoted

1. Strengthening student midwives’ capability to optimise labour and birth physiology: An international collaborationkcl.ac.uk · 4 Oct 2026
2. Evidence-based maternity care: looking back, to move forwardkcl.ac.uk · 30 Sept 2026
3. King's academics respond to Baroness Amos' interim report on maternity serviceskcl.ac.uk · 30 Sept 2026
4. NHS directed pregnant women to controversial Free Birth Society via charitytheguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026

Related media coverage

Recent UK press coverage of their topics — not necessarily citing them directly.

• Patient complaints to NHS Ayrshire & Arran rise by 13 per cent in a yearThe Herald
• Readers share experiences as Wrexham Maelor A&E waits among longest in WalesLeader Live
• We are providing unsafe levels of care even before winter, says leading Scottish A&E doctorThe Scotsman

Contact & links

• Staff pagehttps://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/claire-feeley
• Websitehttps://www.clairefeeley.com/published here ↗
• LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-feeley-09646b67/

Organisational contact points only, each taken from a page the organisation publishes itself. No personal or direct contact details are held or shown.