Professor Bennett is an immunologist with a track record investigating how immune cells in our skin develop and function.  She is particularly interest in understanding how diseases in the skin can affect the ability of the skin immune system to protect us from infection. Professor Bennett completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh before moving to Amsterdam in the Netherlands for her post-doctoral work.  During her post-doc she developed new model systems to study Langerhans cells (LCs), specialised immune cells that form a network throughout the outer layer of our skin. In 2006 she moved to UCL in London, where she has established her research career.  LCs are a unique population of phagocytes programmed within embryonic skin to maintain tissue and immunological homeostasis at the epidermal barrier site.  Unique amongst tissue-resident macrophages, LC also function as migrating professional antigen presenting cells, a capability classically assigned to DCs. Recent work from the Bennett lab has aimed at elucidating the mechanisms driving this dual identity. In 2021 Clare moved to the Cancer Institute at UCL where she combines her work understanding cellular immunity in the skin, with researching new approaches to targeting DCs in cancer therapies.