With a background in Social Science and mental health nursing, I joined Nursing Studies as a full time lecturer in 2013. My teaching focuses on research methods, mental health including a course the I developed on Contemporary issues in mental health: engagement through the arts, humanities and social science, and critical engagement with professional issues relating to working in healthcare organisations.

I have developed a body of research driven by a commitment to social justice. There are two main threads running through this research: 1) a methodological focus on voice and the power relations within research production. This has led to the use of narrative and creative methodologies which deeply explore the health related experience of marginalised groups, and creative re/presentation of these experiences as a means to decentre the authoritative voice of the researcher. Projects include digital storymaking with people with dementia, narratives of newly qualified nurses, narrative research into mental health patient experience and the development of poems to represent participants’ stories. I am also associate director of the newly created Centre for Creative Relational Inquiry in the School of Health in Social Science, University of Edinburgh.  2) A focus on understanding the impact of institutional policy and practices on those in marginalised positions. For instance through researching questions aimed at supporting the development of an evidence base for fair admissions such as investigating values based selection through a longitudinal examination of the impact of EI (as a proxy for values) and previous caring experience on completion of pre-registration nursing/midwifery programmes and autoethnographic study of power in service user/researcher relationship.

I supervise PhD students from nursing and other social science disciplines who are using qualitative methodologies, and in particular narrative/discourse analytic methodologies. Topics are variable and current PhD topic include examining the gendered experience of unpaid caring, mental health nurses' role conceptualisation in relation to physical health, widening participation, compassionate care, exploitation of people with mental health issues, and understanding the production of nurse work drawing on new materialist theory.