I am a sociologist of health and illness with specific interests in palliative and end of life care, bereavement, and diagnosis of cancer. I specialise in qualitative research and have used a range of methods including narrative interviews and analysis, discourse analysis, and ethnography. My current position is a collaboration with Marie Curie that aims to promote research activities within Marie Curie's services with the aim to improve palliative and end of life care for people with life-limiting illnesses. This involves developing, facilitating and coordinating research projects with local, national and international academic and clinical partners. I am available to supervise doctorate students.

From 2014 to 2018 I was based at the University of Oxford and worked on several projects including a Cancer Research UK NAEDI funded international comparative study of patients' experiences of lung or colorectal cancer diagnosis in England, Denmark and Sweden. Working with Prof Sue Ziebland and Julie Evans we sought to provide a new in-depth contextualisation of patient experiences of diagnosis through cross country comparison. Following this I collaborated with Dr Brian Nicholson investigating GP and patient experiences of "safety netting" in the context of potential cancer diagnosis in primary care. Between 2013 and 2014 I worked on an Australian Research Council Linkage Project titled 'Pathways to and through palliative care: A sociological study of patient, carer and clinician experiences at end of life', with Associate Professor Alex Broom and Dr Emma Kirby at the University of Queensland. This project explored patients', carers' and clinicians' experiences of palliative and end-of-life care. Our aim was to provide new conceptual understandings of end-of-life and palliative care as relationally, culturally and ideologically mediated. My doctoral research at the London School of Economics and Political Science provided a sociological exploration of how people with cancer, who used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), came to understand their use of CAMs as part of a wider experience of healthcare and 'self-health'. A significant goal of my thesis was to develop a conceptual understanding of peoples' experiences of self-health in cancer healthcare. In particular, I explored how the self-health techniques and practices affected users' experiences of diagnosis, on-going illness, and understandings of wellbeing.