I am a Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences, Couse Lead for the Foundation Year in Law and Social Sciences, and the Technical Director of investigate.games.
My research favours small-scale ethnographic approaches, which I frame through a cultural and interactionist lens. At the heart of my research are questions about how people interact with each other and how such interactions are performed and mediated. I’m interested in the way in which play and the playing of games act as a mediator for social interaction.
Much of my work focuses on public sociology, collaborating with organisations to unlock their sociological imaginations and champion the transformative power of play through Knowledge Exchange. As part of this work, I co-lead several large-scale annual events, including the York Board Games Convention, Demons Wake (a social deduction games convention), and the Games Lab (as part of the Aesthetica Short Film Festival).
In the 2025 to 26 academic year, alongside working with students to develop their independent research projects, I will be teaching across the following modules:
- Contextualising Law and Social Science (L3)
- Investigating Games (L6)
- Problem-based Project (L3)
- Crime and Media (L6)
I have been teaching in Higher Education since 2015. During that time, I’ve taught across the Sociology, Criminology, Religious Studies, and Professional Policing departments. Some previous modules that I have delivered include: Buddhism in India and Southeast Asia (L5), Buddhist Ethics (L6), Childhood (L4), Cultural Criminology (L5), Digital Policing (L6), Hindu Texts and Practices (L5), Introducing Social Psychology (L4), Pleasure, Leisure and Social Interaction (L4), Public Protection (L6), Religions of East Asia (L5) and Social Media, Data and Society (L7).
My research spans several overlapping areas, which are all underscored by attempting to grapple with understanding micro-sociological interaction:
- Pleasure, leisure, fun, and play. My research examines the relationship between playing games (both tabletop and digital) and the ‘real world’, offering insights into how people find respite and community through play. Recently, my work has been thinking about knowledge exchange within such communities, and how value, trust and meaning are constructed socially.
- Ethnographic approaches and methodologies. I am particularly interested in autoethnography, mobile methods, elicitation, interactionism, and ethnomethodology.
- Death and dying. I am drawn to how individuals consider and respond to death, and how they engage with grief, primarily through play, humour, and leisure.
- Socio-religious practice. My career began in Religious Studies, and I continue to be interested in incarnations of Theravāda Buddhist practice, contemporary Wicca, East Asian Shamanism, and non-theistic Satanism.
I welcome contact from potential research students as well as colleagues who wish to work within or across these areas.
Recent publications
Professional accreditations
- Mental Health First Aider, Mental Health England (MHFA)
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
- Technology Enhanced Learning Practitioner, SEDA (SEDA STEL)
Professional roles (current)
- Appeals and Conduct Committee member (York St John University)
- York Business School Quality Panel member (York St John University)
- Governor and Chair of Learner Experience Committee (Furness College)
- External Examiner (University of East London)
- Director and PSC (Retail)
- Director and PSC (Publishing)
Professional roles (previous)
- Death & Culture Network Steering Group (2018-2023)
- Book Reviews’ Editor of Mortality (2020-2022)
- Company Secretary of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust (2015-2019)
- Board Member of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies (2013-2015)
- Trustee of Upstage Centre Youth Theatre (2012-2016)
Successful funding applications
- British Sociological Association (x2)
- Institute for Social Justice
- Research Centre for Social Sciences (x3)
- Screen Industries Growth Network (x2)
- The Spalding Trust
- UK Association for Buddhist Studies
- University of York (x2)
- A range of businesses and organisations to support Knowledge Exchange work
Events convened
I have been involved in convening many events, including Demons Wake (2025) York Board Games Convention (2025, 2024), Games Lab @ ASFF (2025, 2024, 2023), Death & Culture IV (2022); Spelunking 2020: Games, Cultures, Societies (2020); Death & Culture III (2020); Interdisciplinary Approaches to Corpse Work (2019); Walking Amongst the Dead: The York Death & Culture Walk (2019); The Promise and Perils of Researching Sensitive Issues (2018); Death & Culture II (2018); York’s Dark Past: Crime, Punishment, and Justice (2018); Playing Dead (2018); Primary Education: What is and what might be (2016); and Translating Buddhism (2016).
