I am broadly interested in social inequalities and education from secondary schooling to higher education and into the labour market in different national contexts, and my three recent books reflect various aspects of these interests.
Currently, I am co-investigator (Lancaster P.I.) along with Prof. Lynn McAlpine (Oxford) on an ERASMUS Plus funded project entitled Researcher Identity Development in the Social Sciences, collaborating with colleagues in Spain, Estonia and Finland. The project is considering the experiences of early career researchers across different countries with a view to developing toolkits to support career development.
I was recently co-investigator (Lancaster P.I.) on the Leverhulme Trust funded Paired Peers project with Prof. Harriet Bradley and colleagues, which builds upon my work at the University of Bristol. This research spans a seven year period from 2010 to 2017 and focussed on the experiences of working-class and middle-class young people as they make their way through undergraduate programs at two different universities in the same city, and into life beyond graduation.
My specific research interests are in classed and gendered identities and the impact of education on the maintenance and transformation of people's ways of being.
I am interested in supervising PhDs which connect with any of the following areas: Gender inequalities in education, specifically identity issues in young people’s educational transitions; Higher Education and widening participation, conceptualised broadly to consider access, experience and transitions from university; Social-class; Social mobility; Bourdieu; Theorising masculinities; Labour market transitions; Young people’s identity construction (including class, gender, race, ethnicity, locality, nationality, migration, religion; Developing visual methodologies).