Axel was born and educated in Berlin (Germany) at Free University and Humboldt University and subsequently studied at Aberdeen University and the University of Wales. He settled in South Wales in 1996. In 2005 he took up a position of Research Fellow at the School of Medicine, Cardiff University and joined Edge Hill as a Senior Research Fellow in April 2013. He was appointed Reader in Health Service Research in 2016 and is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Integrated Care. Axel is Visiting Professor at the Department of Health and Social Management at the University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio and  currently Vice President of EHMA, the European Health Management Association (Brussels).

Axel has designed and delivered evaluations of health improvement programmes in England and Wales and is also member of the Children’s Nursing Research Unit at Alder Hey, the Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Axel has an interest in programme evaluations, evaluation methodologies and quantitative and qualitative approaches to research. Leading on from his work in intellectual disabilities, he has developed a research focus on multiagency work, service integration and partnerships in health services for patients with complex health care needs. More recently he has written on complexity and complex adaptive systems as evaluative frameworks to assess health service programmes and patient outcomes.

He leads the Special Interest Group for Integrated Care of the European Health Management Association and works with colleagues across England to establish an Integrated Care Researcher Network. 

Post-Graduate Supervision and Teaching

Axel is teaching Research Methodologies, Quantitative Approaches and Statistics/SPSS on the MCh and MRes course of the Medical School and supervises currently three PhD students and several Master’s students.
Axel is leading a module in Strategic Clinical Leadership and leads the dissertation module for more than 65 students per cohort in the Masters in Surgery/ Masters in Medicine degree.