I am currently a Senior Lecturer in Education and Disability Studies at the School of Social Sciences where I am involved in the Special Educational Needs (SEN) and Disability Studies in Education (DSE) degrees. I am also a member of the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies. I teach across all levels of undergraduate, Masters and the Ed.D. programme as well as providing training for staff.

I lead two modules in the Professional Doctoral programme, including the important Research Proposal module.

My research is located primarily in disability studies, feminist theory and education. As such, my work is very interdisciplinary and is concerned primarily with issues of social justice and social change.

A great part of my research has focused on investigating chronic illness from a disability studies perspective, focusing on the barriers that people with chronic conditions experience in their everyday lives. These included barriers in employment, access to health care and education. The role of both ableism and disablism in the lives of people with chronic conditions was explored in detail. Another aspect of this work looked at the lay knowledges and strategies people develop with and through their experience of impairment, which are often not recognised by established systems of knowledge such as biomedicine. As a result of this research, I have delivered workshops on chronic illness in the workplace to institutions such as the NHS.

Other work has explored issues of gender and disability and issues of access and disability in Higher Education.

Since 2022, I have been part of a team of researchers, working with colleagues at the University of Liverpool, who have had 3 successful research projects funded.

2024-2026 – Co-Investigator – UKRI and UoL Impact and Acceleration Accounts Funding
Part of the team who secured funding to enhance the impact of two research projects detailed below. Key partnerships include DaDaFest and the NHS R&D branch. As the lead for the NHS R&D collaboration, I am spearheading efforts to explore how healthcare systems can better support individuals with Energy Limiting Conditions (ELCs). This involves engaging with NHS staff to identify effective support mechanisms for patients with ELCs, as well as amplifying the voices of NHS employees who experience these conditions themselves.
 
2023 – 2024 - Co-Investigator - Arts and Humanities Research Council (£39,940) – Imagining better futures of health and social care with and for people with energy limiting chronic illnesses, AHRC Reference: AH/X012263/1 with Prof Bethan Evans (PI), UoL and Chronic Illness Inclusion (organisation of people living with Chronic Illness). 
This project expanded from the previous one by working with people living with ELCs to map out how they would envision a better future for this community in terms of access to health and social care. Participants used creative methods to produce artefacts through synchronous and asynchronous online workshops and participated in discussions with the artists and researchers.
Research project co-designed with CII and research assistants on the project were members of CII.  The project also worked with other partners such as Healing Justice London an employed and worked collaboratively with artists who facilitated the workshops and created artistic outputs. Offered key leadership in the use of online research methods, workshop management and website materials.
Project Website: https://disbeliefdisregard.uk/ba-project/ 
 
Impact and public engagement includes: live synchronous and asynchronous creative workshops with women and non-binary people – participants worked with the different artists to imagine better futures of health and social care; creative outputs are available on our website to support others going through similar experiences; artists also created a number of outputs from the workshops including a comic book; a zine and life writing pieces. These will help make accessible the key ideas shared by participants on how they envisioned better access to health and social care. Training for health professionals about understanding energy-limiting conditions and avoiding disbelief and disregard in the medical encounter provided in partnership with Healing Justice London.

2022 – 2024 - Co-Investigator - British Academy/Leverhulme Grant (£9,835.34) – Disbelief and Disregard: The Gendered Experiences of Energy Limiting Chronic Illnesses in England, Reference: SG2122\210842 
with Prof Bethan Evans (PI), UoL and Chronic Illness Inclusion (organisation of people living with Chronic Illness). 
Project Website: https://disbeliefdisregard.uk/ahrc-project/ 
 
Research project co-designed with CII and research assistants on the project are members of CII. It aimed to analyse a large data set of qualitative work that had been collected by CII to better understand access to healthcare for people with Energy Limiting Conditions and health inequalities experienced by people living with ELC. 
 
Impact and public engagement includes: a webinar sharing the results of the research (available on the website); an animation, documenting in accessible ways some of the key findings; policy briefs aimed at different health and social care audiences (available on the website); a medical evaluation toolkit (co-produced with a medical student) which can be used to train Doctors on energy-limiting conditions (available on the website); evidence submitted to the House of Lords Public Services Committee.