The Durham Infancy & Sleep Centre (formerly the Parent-Infant Sleep Lab) is a research centre of the Department of Anthropology. It is the home for a group of researchers examining various aspects of infant and child sleep and parenting behaviour since 1995. Our work with more than 5,000 parents and babies during the last 20+ years has substantially increased parents’ understanding of babies’ sleep, how best to care for babies during the night, and how best to keep them safe when asleep.

Outside of our core research team, we still work with previous members of the core team (associates), and collaborators (academics and clinicians at other institutions around the world). We also work with a large number of research users via outreach, and engagement. As a consequence, our work is implemented into practice in many settings. The team has published over 130 academic papers and popular articles with 49 collaborators.