Psychosocial approaches to mental health; knowledge and power in health and social care; applications of Habermasian theory; therapeutic communities.

I am a qualitative social scientist and health researcher. My research interests lie mainly in mental health, with a particular interest in democratic therapeutic communities and other psychosocial interventions which place an emphasis on relational and communicative processes.

I am part of the team delivering research teaching to trainees on the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology Programme.

I joined the DClinPsy programme team in June 2011, having previously worked for eight years as a researcher in the Health and Community Care Research Unit at the University of Liverpool. Prior to this I undertook my doctoral research at the University of Bristol's School for Policy Studies, where I looked at service user involvement in mental health policy making through the lens of Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action. Habermas's focus on intersubjectivity as a concept of value to social theory led me to an interest in psychological theories of intersubjectivity, and particularly in the relationship between intersubjectivity and individual subjectivity.

Before moving into academia I spent several years working in a policy role in the voluntary social care sector.