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Danya Stone

Danya Stone (BSc MSc FHEA)

Assistant Professor in Anatomy (Medical Education)
E: d.stone@bsms.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)1273 877810
Location: Room 3.07 C, Medical Teaching Building, University of Sussex, Falmer, BN1 9PX

Area of expertise: Anatomy

Research areas: Medical education

Preferred gender pronouns: She/her

Twitter handle: @danyastone

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Biography

Danya Stone is Deputy Head of Anatomy and an Assistant Professor in Anatomy at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. She teaches anatomy across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and leads Module 104 (Nutrition, Metabolism and Excretion) on the undergraduate medical programme. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Danya was awarded an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and Genetics from the University of Sheffield in 2017 and then completed a master’s degree in Human Anatomy and Education in 2018. Danya has since acted as an anatomy demonstrator at Trinity College Dublin, before beginning in her position as Assistant Professor in Anatomy at Brighton and Sussex Medical School in 2019.

Danya's research sits at the intersection of anatomy education, medical education, and the emotional and moral dimensions of learning medicine. She is currently completing a PhD exploring how medical students experience their first encounter with the dead human body during dissection and how these experiences shape emotional development, attitudes toward death, and professional identity formation.

Research

Using mixed-methods approaches, her work examines how students make sense of dissection as both an educational activity and a profound encounter with human mortality. This research explores how students navigate the tension between recognising the donor as a once-living person and engaging with the body as a learning resource, and how strategies such as emotional regulation, detachment, and social co-regulation emerge within the dissection room environment.

More widely, she is interested in the hidden emotional curriculum of anatomy education and professional identity formation, empathy, and emotional resilience in clinical practice.

BACKGROUND IMAGE FOR PANEL

Teaching

Danya teaches anatomy at Brighton and Sussex Medical School through large group lectures, ultrasound and living anatomy tutorials and anatomy dissection and prosection sessions. She leads module 104 (Nutrition, Metablolism and Excretion) on the undergraduate medical program and delivers the teaching on the anatomy of the abdomen. Danya also contributes to teaching on Biomedical courses at both the University of Brighton and Sussex and on the postgraduate medical education course at Brighton and Sussex Medical School.

Selected publications

Dulohery, K., Scully, D., Longhurst, G.J., Stone, D.M. and Campbell, T., 2021. Emerging from emergency pandemic pedagogy: A survey of anatomical educators in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Clinical Anatomy.

Longhurst, G.J., Stone, D.M., Dulohery, K., Scully, D., Campbell, T. and Smith, C.F., 2020. Strength, weakness, opportunity, threat (SWOT) analysis of the adaptations to anatomical education in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland in response to the Covid‐19 pandemic. Anatomical sciences education, 13(3), pp.301-311.

Longhurst, G., Stone, D. and Mahony, N., 2020. Bilateral reversed palmaris longus muscle: a case report and systematic literature review. Surgical and Radiologic Anatomy, 42(3), pp.289-295.

Stone, D.M. and Barry, D.S., 2019. Improving virtual learning interactions: Reducing the transactional distance of online anatomy modules. Anatomical sciences education, 12(6), pp.686-687.

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