Department: Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, Faculty of Social Sciences
Role: Deputy Associate Dean for Research
Research interests: I am interested in how public services can exacerbate or ameliorate poverty and socio-economic inequalities. Over the past seven years, my research in this area has been particularly focused on LGBT+ people.
I believe a positive research culture is important for pragmatic and moral reasons. The pragmatic reason is that the evidence is clear that a positive research culture produces sustainable research success in terms of research funding and outcomes. The moral imperative is that work should always be a positive place to be.
I think a research culture has to be supportive and challenging. It is easy for research conversations in a supportive culture to just end up being about nice ideas, but there does also have to be a constructive challenge to turn those into actual research projects and outputs. A research culture must also be inclusive, and in doing so recognise that inclusion is a difficult, messy thing to do with lots of difficult decisions, trade-offs and arguments to be had.
Ensure the inclusion of research fellows in UoA20 in the REF2021 when I noticed a particular part of the Panel C guidance on these staff had been overlooked by the REF manager.
Restart some stalled careers among colleagues who are mid-career T&R staff.