With a background in Social Science and mental health nursing, my clinical experience is predominantly from working in the community setting within the NHS and voluntary sector. With academic experience extending back to 2002, I joined Nursing Studies as a full-time lecturer in 2013 and am currently Head of Nursing Studies.

My teaching focuses on mental health as well as professional issues arising from working in healthcare organisations, taking a critical approach drawing on my professional experience and research.

My research coalesces round a concern for power, voice and ethical engagement. These concerns shape the focus and approach taken in my research, including community assets based approaches, human learning systems, participatory and co-productive approaches to intervention development. I am a member of the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy (SCPHRP) and part of a group of social science based colleagues focused on global mental health. With colleagues from both of these groups I am engaged in current and developing projects in low and middle income countries including research capacity development of nurses and midwives (Ghana), perinatal distress (Ghana) and maternal healthcare (Mexico). As Co-I on the AHRC funded REALITIES project (https://www.ukri.org/news/projects-to-help-communities-reduce-health-inequalities/) I lead an ethics workstream. I am also part of the RCNF funded YARNS Transition project focused on developing a psychosocial intervention for young people who have experienced stroke.

A methodological focus on voice and the power relations within research production 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.

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 topics include exploring MS experiences through poetry, the use of video sharing sites in relation to LGBT minority stress experiences, adolescent sexual health literacy, exploring the impact of alternative conceptualisation of anxiety, and health-related experiences of young women from travelling communities .

I have a long-standing collaboration with the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Maribor, Slovenia where I am an Honorary Visiting Professor.