Anne Pennington is an award-winning researcher and leader in the use of insights for project delivery.

Anne has ten years’ experience in supporting planning and development of health improvement interventions, service commissioning specifications and social marketing projects. In that time she managed almost 60 research and evaluation projects on topics including smoking, men’s health checks, obesity, physical activity, cancer heart disease and breastfeeding.

Anne’s development of the segmentation and marketing plan to inform smoking cessation programmes in Knowsley resulted in the Highly Commended award in the North West Public Health Awards 2009 for the project Increasing Smoking Quitters in Knowsley through Insight and Understanding.

In managing insight generation, evaluation and partner relationships, Anne was a member of the core development team for a social marketing campaign aimed at raising awareness of domestic abuse in Merseyside, Lancashire and parts of Cheshire – ‘Be a Lover not a Fighter’. This initiative was one of three finalists out of over 60 entries for the NICE Shared Learning Awards 2016.

You can find out more about Anne’s work in Public Health here.

Prior to this, Anne specialised in supporting visitor studies in museums and galleries. She spent 17 years at National Museums Liverpool where she managed around 100 research and evaluation projects on existing and proposed displays, exhibitions and venues.

Here she developed audience development plans for the International Slavery Museum and the Museum of Liverpool which contributed to the largest Heritage Lottery Fund grant ever awarded to a museum at that time (£31m in 2002 and £11.4m in 2006).

She led the way on visitor research in UK museums and galleries and founded The Visitor Studies Group.

UK Public Health Association Conference – Liverpool 2008
Segmenting smokers in Knowsley to reduce smoking prevalence

National Social Marketing Conference – Oxford 2007
Segmentation and market growth – extending the use of stop smoking services in Knowsley

UK Public Health Association Conference – Edinburgh 2007
Men’s health checks in community pharmacies – evaluation of a pilot

Museums Association Conference – Jersey 2000
Ten keys to unlocking evaluation

Liverpool Hope University College – Guest Lecturer 1996, 1997 and 1998
Evaluation of interpretation

Botanic Gardens Education Network – Oxford 1995
Evaluation of interpretation

Tri-country EU interactive science centre project involving Denmark and Republic of Ireland – 1995
Advisor on evaluation of interactive exhibitions

Visitor Studies Association Conference, Raleigh-Durham, USA 1994
Implementing evaluation programmes: A UK perspective.

European Network of Science Centres and Museums conference, Barcelona 1992
Implementing evaluation programmes: A UK perspective.

Question Time   Museum Practice Issue 21 (Volume 7, Number 3) 2002

Case study: Evaluation for a permanent exhibition about the work of conservators “Caught in Time” at National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside.  The Manual of Museum Planning, pp54-57, Gail Dexter Lord and Barry Lord, (eds), 2nd edition 2000

Audience Research: Postcard from the U.K. Visitor Studies Today, 3(1), 18-18, 2000
New visitor studies group in the UK.  Visitor Studies Today!, Volume II, Issue 2, Summer 1999

Case study: Caught in Time. Building Bridges: Guidance for museums and galleries on developing new audiences, pp 16-17, Jocelyn Dodd and Richard Sandell (eds), Museums & Galleries Commission 1998

Managing the evaluation programme at National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside. Evaluation of museum and gallery displays pp 37-44. Sudbury, P. V. and Russell, T. (eds), Liverpool University Press, 1994

Making visitor studies acceptable. Museum Development, May 1994

Anne achieved the Professional Diploma in Marketing in August 2014 and so became an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (ACIM).

Anne has been a Member of the Market Research Society (MMRS) since 1992.