Contact
Biography
I joined the School of Education as a research fellow in July 2022 to support the development of the Hub for European Refugee Education (HERE) project.
I have previously worked at Liverpool Hope University undertaking research in connection with professional football clubs' community engagement - including evaluation of youth engagement work, employability and education programmes and overseas supporters' connectivity with their club and its community work.
Prior to that, I worked for Sheffield based VCO, Football Unites Racism Divides (FURD), undertaking research focused on the role of football in the lives of women and men who are refugees or seeking asylum as well as wider engagement with issues of social justice that could be tackled through the platform of football. This included anti-racist work at the men's FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championships in various locations across the continent and more prosaic interventionist work at the local level.
I also worked as a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, teaching sociological and cultural issues in sport and leisure across a suite of courses within the Academy of Sport.
Expertise Summary
My expertise is in the sociological study of sport and leisure cultures, with an emphasis on football as a community asset, a tool for upholding and challenging the status quo and a cultural product through which social identities are performed.
My methodological approach is informed by a postmodern critical theory that seeks to find pragmatic solutions amongst the fluid and fragmentary lifeworlds of disenfranchised individuals and groups whilst also raising understanding and furthering knowledge across disciplinary boundaries. I have engaged with the everyday life theories of The Situationist International, Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre and Harold Garfinkel as well as that of Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck and Alisdair MacIntyre.
I have successfully combined ethnographic and participatory methods to undertake academic research and practice based impact studies.
Teaching Summary
Sport, Leisure and Consumption
Leisure and Urban Geographies
Community Sport and Informal Education
Migration, Ethnicity and Popular Culture
Sporting Cultures, Emotionality and Digital… read more
Research Summary
I am building knowledge exchange activities around the development of a Football Club of Sanctuary award structure and looking to develop research on the impact of football clubs' engagement with… read more
Recent Publications
Current Research
I am building knowledge exchange activities around the development of a Football Club of Sanctuary award structure and looking to develop research on the impact of football clubs' engagement with refugees.
Using the 700+ resources accumulated so far for the HERE project, I am exploring common themes, particularly around practice based research, informal education and the role of sporting activities.
I am also completing a monograph to be published by Routledge based on my previous research which focuses on a professional football club's community engagement work and the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic had on different stakeholders attached to the club.
Past Research
The 'Football - A shared sense of belonging?' project fused ethnographic methodology with a Participant Action Research (PAR) model to explore the meanings attached to football by women and men who are refugees or seeking asylum in the UK.
Future Research
I am exploring the possibilities of undertaking a mapping exercise of the many and varied organisations which are using football to engage with forced migrants. This will connect with my work in developing a Football Club of Sanctuary award scheme with City of Sanctuary (UK).