I am interested in everyday lives, and my research explores culture and everyday life in order to engage with social, economic and political changes affecting everyday spaces and places. I am particularly interested in contemporary approaches, and considerations, of space and place. 

Empirically, I am interested in everyday life in rural and urban spaces and places: how it is lived and experienced, but also how it is planned for, anticipated and imagined, for example, why people choose to live in one place and not another, to everyday materialities and specifically encounters and experiences of/with nationalism.  

I completed my PhD in Geography at the University of Aberdeen after undergraduate Geography (BSc. Hons) and Masters by Research in Human Geography (MSc. R) degrees from The University of Edinburgh. During and after my PhD I was a Teaching Fellow in Geography & Environment at the University of Aberdeen, before moving to the interdisciplinary Institute of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Aberdeen as a Research Fellow and latterly as a Lecturer. In 2024 I took a career break to travel with my family.  

Views of Manhattan and Hong Kong (Authors own 2018 & 2019)

Rural Scotland, East Lothian (Authors own, taken during fieldwork in 2016/2017)

I am working on three new projects at the University of Glasgow with Professor Petra Meier alongside my own wider research. 

1. PHI-UK Policy Modelling for Health (Health Mod) 
2. GALLANT - Glasgow as a Living Lab Accelerating Novel Transformation
3. Glasgow Changing Futures 

Research in practice 

Healthcare workforce:  

I delivered a Scottish Government funded Chief Scientist Office grant focussed on understanding the experiences, motivations and job preferences of generalist doctors in Scotland, particularly with regard to working in rural and remote areas. An overview of this work can be found here, with further research papers in The Geographical Journal, Future Healthcare Journal, Journal of Rural Studies & the British Journal of General Practice alongside multiple conference papers, invited presentations and dissemination activities with policy makers and practitioners. 

Building on this work I was a co-investigator and delivered a National Institute of Health and Social Care (NIHR) Grant worth £226,909.39 to explore community led initiatives to improve recruitment and retention of health professionals in remote and rural areas of the UK. Work from this was published in the Journal of Health Services Research & Policy.   

Health Inequalities:  

More broadly and expanding on the experience of health related research I won two further NHS Grampian Endowment Grants. One, as Principle Investigator that explored the experiences, differences and changes to medical care for people living in remote and rural areas of Scotland (£11,957). The associated research paper was published in Health and Place, and the research presentation was awarded the Conference Delegates’ Prize at the 2022 NHS Grampian R&D Conference. Second, as a co-investigator in a project looking to understand digital health inequalities in NHS Grampian by exploring digital exclusion and identifying solutions to address it in rural and urban communities (£11,954.95). 

I am a co-investigator on a University of Aberdeen based project funded by the Chief Scientist Office BRUCES: Building Rural-Urban healthCare Equity for Scotland (BRUCES) – a multi-methods research programme in cancer, musculoskeletal health and frailty. (£996,081). Through this project I am also a Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen (2025-date).  

Contemporary Approaches to Space and Place: 

Building on my doctoral thesis I considered the experience of rural living, as well as contemporary approaches to rural research particularly drawing on non-representational theories. This expertise was recognised elsewhere in invitations to author encyclopaedia entries on non-representational theories (co-authored with Amy C. Barron, University of Manchester, UK), alongside invitations to contirbute three book chapters drawing on my expertise in rural studies that engages with contemporary approaches to rural gerontology (with Gavin Andrews, McMaster, Canada), the importance of older people’s contributions and civic engagement in Scotland (with Lorna Philip, Claire Wallace and Kryzs Adamczyk, all Aberdeen, UK) and one considering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to current rural issues in the UK, and beyond (with Lorna Philip, Aberdeen, UK). This work on COVID-19 and rural places has also been published in Geography Directions, part of the Royal Geographical Society with Institute of British Geographers. 

 [Rural Vermont, taken during a fieldtrip at the 2019 Rural Quadrennial Conference, Vermont, USA)

Peer-Review

My reserach expertise ihas been recognised in invitations to review forthe following publications: Environment and Planning A, Social Science & Medicine, British Journal of General Practice, BMC Health Services Research, Health & Place, Ethnography, Political Geography, Geopolitics, Space Policy, Progress in Human Geography, Population, Space and Place, Geoforum, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, The Geographical Journal, GeoJournal, Journal of Rural Studies, Sociologia Ruralis, Science as Culture, the professional publication Oxford Bibliographies, for the National Institute of Health and Care Research and British Academy Grants Awards, and for Routledge.

Prior publications

Prizes, awards & distinctions

• 2023: Nomination (University of Aberdeen Excellence Award: Interdisciplinary Reserach)
• 2022: NHS Grampian R&D Conference Delegates’ Prize Winner, with the presentation ‘Remote and Rural healthcare: pilot study to investigate experiences, differences and changes to medical care for people living in remote and rural areas of Scotland. (NHS Grampian)
• 2017: Best Student Paper - with the paper titled ‘Affective Lives of Rural Ageing’. (European Society for Rural Sociology)
• 2017: Student Paper Competition Winner – ‘More-than-Representational Knowledges of Rural Ageing’ Presentation delivered as part of the 'New Voices in Rural Geography' session at the AAG Annual Conference (April 2017), Boston, USA. (American Association of Geographers (AAG) Rural Geography Specialty Group (RGSG))

Professional & learned societies

• 2020 - date: Treasurer, RGS-IBG Rural Geography Research Group
• 2018 - 2020: Ordinary Member, RGS-IBG Rural Geography Research Group
• 2016 - 2018: Postgraduate Representative, RGS-IBG Rural Geography Research Group
• 2019 - date: Fellow, Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers
• 2015 - 2019: Associate Fellow, Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers
• 2016 - 2020: , American Association of Geographers