I am Senior Lecturer of Communications in the School of Critical Studies. I convene the PGT in Global Communications and teach courses on Cultures of Globalisation, Digital Memory, Digitial Intimacy and Embodiment, as well as core courses in Media and Communications theory and methods.

Prior to my appointment at Glasgow I was Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Coventry University for five years, where I led the Postdigital Intimacies research cluster as well as PGR initiatives. Before that, I held a three-year Assistant Professor teaching-only contract (2017-2020) in the Department of Communications Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. My postdoctoral fellowship (2015-2017) was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and was a cross-appointment between the September 11 Memorial and Museum and New York University. I hold a PhD in Media and Cultural Studies from the University of British Columbia. Both my M.A. and PhD were fully funded by the Canada Research Council.

My work engages Media and Communications Studies to explore the production, circulation and reception of digital and postdigital intimacies. I do this with attention to feminist intersectionality, platform, interface, science and technology studies, and digital health (i.e. the “industry” known colloquially as “FemTech”), and I evaluate what new communications technologies (including those that operate across and within the body itself) might bring to bear on the most pressing social and cultural challenges of our time, particularly those relating to climate, gender and tech-faciliated violence, healthcare access and reproductive justice. The primary impacts of this work are literacy (i.e. digital toolkits for media and platform education), policy (i.e. regulation of digital safety via the Online Safety Act, EU Digital Services act, etc.) and feminist safety-bydesign frameworks for media and communications technologies. 

I draw deeply from intersectional feminist perspectives and employ applied approaches such as co-production and co-design to involve end users to better understand how health messaging in particular is created, mediated, and acted upon. I believe this approach serves to increase not only media literacies but also health justice outcomes for those whose experiences and voices are often overlooked due to protected characteristics such as race, class, gender and sexuality, (dis)ability, and neurodiversity. It is extremely important to me to collaborate with end users, survivors, and advocacy organizations, in addition to health practitioners, industry leaders, and care providers to ensure not only output buy-in and impact, but that tools and resources are created by, and for, those who will benefit most. 

My project work is closely aligned with my publishing, which draws on media and communications theory to look at the technologies of hospitality (the ethical imperative to welcome the stranger) in relation to gender-based violence and its relationship with adjacent oppressions such as ecological violence, domestic and virtual gendered labour, health and technology, and more. This thinking culminated in a recent monograph The Digital Future of Hospitality (2023). Another recent work, for TOPIA, explored the use of fitness trackers in intimate partner violence, biopolitical surveillance, and stalking. I am currently working on a monograph seeking to understand the role of media and popular culture in mediating some of our deepest anxieties about welcoming strangers amidst planetary catastrophe and considers how a philosophy of hospitality operates alongside the looming spectre of climate crisis.

I would happily invite proposals from interested PhD students in the above areas.

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Prior publications

2024 (PI). ESRC Priority Area Award. “Preventing digital gender-based violence in the UK and Spain: Cross-cultural collaboration through widening education and literacy.” With A. Evans (Co-I). 

2024 (PI). ESRC IAA Partnership Development Award. AI and SRHR Consortium. 

2023-24 (Co-PI) ESRC Impact Accelerator Fund. “Consent, Coercive Control and Technologically-Facilitated Abuse: Co-building policy and digital toolkits for the elimination of online violence against women and girls.” With Adrienne Evans.

2022-23 (Co-PI) Research England. “Postdigital Intimacies for Online Safety: Building policy recommendations through co-production partner workshops.” With Sarah Kate Merry, Marcus Maloney, and Adrienne Evans.

2022 (PI) Research England Policy Support Fund. “Preliminary Policy Stakeholder Engagement for Emergent FemTech, Gender-based Violence, and Women’s Digital Health.” With Grace Carter (Co-I) and Maxine Whelan (Co-I)

2015 – 2017. Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship. 9/11 Memorial Museum and New York University. 

2011-2015. Social Sciences and Humanitites Research Council Doctoral Scholarship

2010-2011. Social Sciences and Humanitites Research Council Masters Scholarship

PhD Director of Studies: “Creative interventions for PCOS: A discourse analysis and product design guideline for feminine technologies.” AHRC fully funded.

PhD Co-Supervisor: “Examining the Experiences and Worldviews of Women and Girls who Engage with Femcel Online Spaces.” AHRC fully-funded.

PhD Director of Studies: “Gender, Biometrics, and Embodied Health Computing: A framework for inclusion in FemTech.” Trailblazers scheme, fully funded.

PhD Co-Supervisor: “"Domestic digital guests: Speculative approaches to (meta)data in the home." Fully funded. 

Glasgow:

• COMMS 5001: Communications and Media, Theories and Concepts
• COMMS 5003: Research Methods and Strategies for Communications
• COMMS 5010: Digital Memory
• COMMS 5011: Cultures of Globalisation
• COMMS 5012: Intimate and Embodied Communications
• COMMS 5002: Communications Individual Project

Previously:

• Cultures of Globalisation 
• Digital Memory and Digital Death
• Visual Communication and Culture (Methods for Visual Analysis)
• Communication, Culture, and Popular Art: Race, Class and Gender in Street Art and Graffiti
• International Communication
• Carceral Bodies on Screen
• Cultures of Hospitality (PHD module)