My work explores the ways in which societies punish wrongdoers, using sociological, cultural, historical and comparative approaches.

I have  written on the Ireland’s use of Magdalene laundries, and the contemporary histories of Irish and Scottish prison systems - for which I received the Theoretical Criminology Best Article Prize (2022) and the Brian Williams Prize (2020) for the best criminological article from an emerging scholar.  

Along with traditional academic writing, I am especially keen on the arts and how they can communicate research and engage the public. In 2023, I was named as one of the BBC’s New Generation Thinkers, and made a radio essay based on my work. I also co-wrote a script for a piece of dance theatre (with Sinead McCann), shown in Dublin in 2024 to much audience acclaim. In 2024, I signed contracts with The Bodley Head (UK) and Simon and Schuster (US) for a tradebook on my research examining the rise and fall of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries. 

In 2025, I was the recipent a Royal Sociey of Literature's  Giles St Aubyn prize for new non-fiction.

I joined Strathclyde in 2021 as a Chancellor's Fellow, having previously been the Policy and Public Affairs Manager at the Howard League Scotland a lecturer at the University of Stirling. I completed my PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2017. During that time I was also a visiting Fulbright scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at UC Berkeley.

I am currently leading an ESRC New Investigator Grant funded study of Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, "Mass Decarceration: A critical social history'.  With Dr Colette Barry (UCD) I am also undertaking a history of Irish prison officers, funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme small grant fund.

My books include "The Politics of Punishment" and the "Histories of Punishment and Social Control in Ireland". I am an international associate editorial board member at Punishment & Society, and on the editorial boards of The British Journal of Criminology, and Law & Society Review.

For part of 2024/25, I will be a Nominated Fellow at IASH at the University of Edinburgh, and a Visiting Fellow at NYU's Ireland House. I am also undertaking an MRes in Creative Writing at the Univeristy of Strathclyde.

I welcome PhD applications concerned with penal culture and penal politics, comparative criminology, and the social history of punishment.