Gender, sexuality, feminist and queer theory

Sociology of emotions, feeling, and affect

Sociology of education, sociology of knowledge

Youth Studies, political participation, citizenship, social change

Ethnographic methods, participatory and creative methods

I joined the School of Education as Chancellor's Fellow in 2017. I have previously worked as a Lecturer in Public Sociology at Queen Margaret University, as a researcher in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, and as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Lisbon. My book Seriousness in Women's Roller Derby: Gender, Organisation, and Ambivalence (2015, Palgrave) was awarded the 2016 British Sociological Association Philip Abram's Memorial Prize for the best first sole authored book in sociology, and shortlisted for the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport annual prize in 2016. My second book Feminist Repetitions in Higher Education: Interrupting Career Categories is co-authored with Prof Yvette Taylor and was published in 2020.

I am interested in intersectional inequalities in higher education, among both students and academic workers, and particularly in how stratification and exclusion is reproduced and can be challenged. I research and publish in this area, for instance in investigations of imposter syndrome as a public feeling, queer feminist education, feminist collaborations across academic career stages, and widening participation programmes.

I teach on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the School of Education and in Humanities and Social Science, including the BA in Primary Education, and the MSc Applied Gender Studies. I currently supervise PhDs and EdDs broadly investigating gender and sexuality in educational contexts, including young people's experiences of heteronormativity in schools, and trans educational inclusions.

I'm available to supervise undergraduate and postgraduate research projects on topics related to my interests, and especially those which use sociological theory and qualitative, ethnographic, participatory methods to investigate educational ineqaulities, particularly at the intersections of gender and sexuality.

I coordinate the university-wide Gender research theme and the BSA Gender Study Group.

I previously coordinated the ongoing Feminist Research Network Seminar Series (with Prof Yvette Taylor).