My research investigates how top-down planning and regeneration strategies are understood and interpreted by local populations, usually residents of areas that broadly speaking fit the description of post-industrial cities and towns. I have looked at how Liverpool's organic creative communities understood the process of commodifying place identity and notions of culture the Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008, I have assessed the interventions of a creative arts project as it sought to mediate a large scale regernation of West Bromwich town centre, I was a member of a research activist collective called Games Monitor during the run up and hosting of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014, I have looked at the ways in which planning legacies of New Towns are held and remembered by residents of the Warrington in the North West England and Washington in the North East England. Most recently I have looked at the changing heritage values that residents attach to the area of Granton in North Edinburgh as the City Council embark on a long term place re-making project called "Granton Waterfront". I am also a Research Fellow within the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at University of Edinburgh.
I am both a lecturer and trade unionist. My teaching and workplace practice has encompassed perspectives in critical approaches to urban geography, forms of collectivism, community and workplace organising and radical pedagogies and often cites the work of David Harvey, Neil Smith, Jane McAlevey, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Henri Lefebvre, Jacques Ranciere, to name a few. I am also committed to interdisciplinarity, having a BA (Hons) in Film and Photography, and Masters degree in Social Anthropology and a PhD awarded by a School of Law. I have to date taught Geographical approaches largely to students of Geography, but also students of Sociology, Business Studies and Landscape, Planning and Architecture.
My modules at undergraduate level at York St John have included: Urban Processes and Politics; Introducing Human Geographies; Qualititative Methods; Maps, Mapping and GIS, Culture and Landscape, Tourism Geographies, Events Tourism, International Cross-Cultural Fieldwork. At Masters level it has included Political Ecology; Representing Human Environmental Relations; Capstone Supervison. I have also been involved in the supervisory Teams of several PhD candidates at York St John.
