My research interests centre on semigroup theory, automata theory and category theory. I am currently working on the connections between partial symmetries, topological groupoids and C*-algebras. These diverse topics are linked by a non-commutative generalization of Stone duality.

I was an undergraduate and graduate student at York University with a one year spell at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge where I read the Part III in mathematics. After my DPhil, I spent three years at Lincoln College Oxford as a JRF followed by a year at the T.H. Darmstadt supported by the Royal Society. I was subsequently lecturer and then senior lecturer in mathematics at CPGC before moving to Heriot-Watt in 2004.