My main research interests are:

literacy and education (the politics and practices of teaching reading and writing, specifically the debates around the use of phonics; adult literacy policy and practice; health literacy; critical literacy and the use of picture books to engage children in critical thinking and analysis;   literacy development in countries of the Global South, specifically for deaf children and young people; 

collaborative action research; co-creation

Linguistic landscapes and their role in language and literacy teaching

Literacy policy, specifically phonics, and how it is implemented in schools The role of written texts in health care contexts (including studies of patients' information searching and learning strategies) Ethnographic studies of literacy practices in various settings (e.g. institutions, workplaces, communities, etc.) Linguistic landscape research: the role of writing and visual in the cultural production of space

 Professor of Literacy Studies, Co-Director of the Literacy Research Centre

County South, C71

My research is interdisciplinary, located at the boundaries between social anthropology, education and applied linguistics. Main areas of work are: literacy in education, developing literacy education (in particular English literacy) in countries of the Global South, adult literacy (policy and teachers' perspectives) and critical literacy.

Since I started working in Lancaster in 2002, my 'research home' has been the Literacy Research Centre. As an active member and Co-Director of the Centre, my research is guided by an understanding of literacy not primarily as a skill, but as a social and cultural practice.  This understanding has implication for how literacy is taught and this covers one area of my work. An example is my work on developing new approaches to teaching English literacy to deaf children and young adults. 

Thinking about literacy as a practice also has implications for how we understand the role of reading and writing in different areas of everyday life. In the past, I have researched 'health literacy' as a practice that shapes how health care is dispensed and how patients themselves make sense of their illness, engage with health care providers and seek information. 

 I have a longstanding interest in examining policy, specifically current policies to teach reading and writing to children in primary schools and how specific understandings of literacy and of 'evidence' about literacy teaching shape governmental policies. 

I am currently working on a study to investigate developments in adult literacy policy in the UK in the past 20 years and how practitioners engage with and 'live' these policies. I'm mostly interested here in the effect of wider policy changes, related to neoliberalism, human resources development, austerity and benefits policies as well as wider transformations in the education and skills landscape on adult literacy provision. 

With financial support from our Faculty, I am currently supporting the Morecambe Bay Curriculum Storytelling and Writing Pilot Project. This involves children and teachers from seven schools in the Morecambe Bay area creating and writing a story inspired by a local event, fact, monument or landscape. The theory underpinning this research is that project-based, child-lead literacy activities using local themes of the children's choice supports engagement and learning, making the curriculum relevant. The project will produce a collection of stories to be used as curriculum resource for literacy and oracy lessons.

I use primarily ethnographic and collaborative methods which I complement with various other research approaches, including critical discourse analysis and multimodal analysis.

External role

I am co-editor, with Julia Gillen, of the Routledge series 'Literacies' and 'Routledge Research in Literacy'.