I am based in the School of Social Sciences and a member of the Doctoral Centre team. My primary teaching role at Heriot-Watt is designing and delivering Qualitative Social Research Methods training at postgraduate and doctoral level. I co-supervise PhD students, and welcome PhD projects that align with my qualitative approach to research, as detailed below.

Prior to Heriot-Watt, I was a Teaching Fellow at Keele University, where I taught several core BPS subjects at undergraduate level, and MSc Research Methods modules. Before Keele, I was a Research Fellow at Loughborough University on a Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded by the Economic and Social Research Council. My higher education was also at Loughborough, where I hold a PhD in Discursive Psychology/Conversation Analysis, a Discursive Psychology MSc (Distinction), and Social Psychology BSc (First Class Honours).

I am a member of the Centre for Applied Behavioural Sciences, within which my research activities are situated. My research uses discursive psychology, underpinned by conversation analytic methods, to investigate everyday interactions. My analytic focus is on examining telephone helpline recordings in a variety of institutional settings, such as neighbourhood mediation, a housing and homelessness charity, and the police emergency service. I am also experienced in communication skills training with professionals using the Conversation Analytic Roleplay Method (CARM), in which practitioners work with recordings from their own workplace to establish what works ‘interactionally’ and what doesn’t, in calls to their service.