Over the years, my work as a social anthropologist has been guided by a deep curiosity about how people make sense of their lives in times of transformation. I have explored how human development unfolds within particular social worlds — how children, young people, and adults learn, adapt, and imagine new possibilities amidst uncertainty. Much of my research focused on post-industrial cities, where questions of class, race, and belonging intertwined with urban change and national transformation in economy and politics. At the heart of this work was a central concern: to understand how people make meaning of their lives. In more recent years, my focus has turned inward; as a psychotherapist and yoga teacher,
I continue to explore how people make sense of their experience and adapt to or bring about significant life change, but I focus through a more embodied lens. I’m interested in how cultural stories live in the body, how healing unfolds through practices of movement and breath, and how our sense of ourselves can radically transform through therapeutic conversation. This evolution is not a departure from anthropology but an expansion of it — a continuation of my lifelong inquiry into what it means to be human in a changing world.
From Observation to Embodiment
My yoga retreats in the Blue Zones of the world where longevity, connection, and wellbeing are woven into daily life, have deepened my understanding of what supports human flourishing. I now explore how these same principles can nurture vitality and meaning in modern urban life.
Human Flourishing
I explore the human dimensions of urban regeneration, examining how neighbourhood change is brought about, how it reshapes belonging, social relations, and ideas of value, while revealing who benefits, who is displaced, and how memory endures in the landscape.
Urban Regeneration
The landscapes of post-industrial cities fascinate me: places where histories of labour, migration, and deindustrialisation converge. My research examines how people live in these spaces, make sense of loss, reimagine community, and engage with changing forms of economy and governance.
Post-industrial Cities and Politics
My work examines how class, identity, and race shape everyday life, exploring how people navigate difference and belonging in multicultural societies and what these encounters reveal about the emotional and moral fabric of social life.
Social Class, Multiculturalism and Race
I’m interested in how young people imagine their futures, and how education — both formal and informal — shapes those dreams. My research often engages with the voices of children and adolescents, treating them as social actors in their own right.
Childhood, Youth and Education
My work explores how people grow, adapt, and thrive within complex social worlds, tracing the deeply relational interplay between unique individuals, families, communities, their environments, and the cultural, economic, and political forces that shape life’s possibilities.
Human Development
Beneath the surface of contemporary politics run deep emotional and cultural currents — stories of belonging, loss, identity, and hope. In this ten-part podcast series, I draw on thirty years of research into the post-industrial landscapes of Britain, Europe, and the United States to reveal how these undercurrents have shaped our age of division. Under Currents explores how the decline of industry, the erosion of community life, and the politics of resentment and nostalgia have transformed not only economies, but imaginations — turning culture itself into a battleground. Each episode blends anthropology, storytelling, and reflection to uncover how politics became emotional and cultural: how people’s attachments, fears, and moral worlds became the terrain on which power now operates.
Under Currents: how politics became cultural and why it matters
Podcast
I welcome opportunities to meet with students and early-career researchers seeking guidance on ethnographic research, writing and fieldwork. Drawing on my own academic and interdisciplinary background, I offer mentoring and expert advice to those exploring questions relevant to my areas of specialism in the anthropologies of the UK, nationalism, politics, economy, Brexit, race, ethnicity and multiculturalism, childhood, youth and education, urban regeneration, Olympic legacy and theories of human development.
Student Appointments
Whether through consultation, media collaboration, public talks, or mentoring, I aim to create thoughtful spaces for dialogue and understanding — places where insight can lead to transformation.I have extensive experience contributing to media discussions on social issues, race, social class, multiculturalism, education, and the human condition. Whether through interviews, documentaries, or expert commentary, I bring an anthropological perspective to contemporary questions about belonging, identity, and social change. I particularly enjoy working with creative teams to ensure that public storytelling remains grounded in analytical depth, and respect for lived experience.
Media Engagements
My work now brings together my background in social anthropology, psychotherapy, and education, allowing me to engage with people and projects that value reflection and depth.I give talks and lectures to both academic and public audiences on themes such as human development, childhood and youth, social class, urban regeneration, and the pursuit of human flourishing. My speaking style combines analytical clarity with storytelling, inviting audiences to see the familiar anew and to reflect on their own place within broader social transformations. I am available for conferences, panels, festivals, and community events that seek to open thoughtful dialogue about the world we live in.
guest speaker
I’m interested in working with and being in conversation with organisations, media makers, and individuals who are curious about the human condition and the ways we live, learn, and connect in times of change. I offer consultation to organisations seeking to deepen their understanding of social and cultural change, human development, and wellbeing. Drawing on my background in social anthropology, psychotherapy, and education, I help teams and institutions reflect on the human dimensions of their work — from organisational culture and community engagement to diversity and inclusion. My approach is collaborative and reflective, aimed at fostering insight, empathy, and meaningful transformation within complex social settings.
Consultation
engage with me
If you’d like to explore the possibility of working together — whether through consultation, conversation, or collaboration — I’d be glad to hear from you. I welcome enquiries from individuals, organisations, and creative teams who share an interest in the human stories that shape our world. Please feel free to get in touch to begin a conversation.
READY TO work together?
‘Worklessness’: a family portrait
brexit britain 2
brexit britain 1
urban regeneration
the culture of class politics
Race Class and Youth Violence
articles
This anthology brings together ethnographic studies from cities across the UK, Europe, the USA, and the Global South.
Post Industrial Precarity New ethnographies of urban lives in uncertain times.
A long-term ethnographic study of the planning, politics, and human consequences of London’s Olympic legacy.
London's Olympic Legacy: the inside track.
An ethnographic account of class, culture, and schooling in Southeast London, exploring how social divisions are reproduced and experienced through education.
Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain.
books
PHD SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY BRUNEL UNIVERSITY
MSC SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT, BRUNEL UNIVERSITY
BA HONOURS, SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
FORMER DIRECTOR OF POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
FORMER DIRECTOR OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
qualifications
Each month I explore a single theme from three different perspectives — Anthropology, Psychotherapy, and Yoga. Together, these reflections offer a way of seeing how our inner and outer worlds are connected: how culture shapes feeling, how emotion shapes thought, and how the body quietly holds it all. You’re invited to follow whichever thread speaks to you most — the social, the psychological, or the embodied — or to move between them and notice how they overlap. Each post is a meditation on what it means to live, change, and seek meaning in uncertain times. These reflections are not essays so much as conversations: between disciplines, ways of knowing, and practices of paying attention.
blog
-Gavin Poynter, University of East London, UK
‘No other author has achieved this degree of access to the institutions responsible for planning and delivering the Games and its legacies […]The text provides a timely “corrective” to reports, including official reports, that suggest London 2012 provides a ‘model’ of governance for future applicant and host cities of mega-events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games.'
-Kevin Ward, University of Manchester, UK
‘This book is deceptively analytical and wonderfully written. With the use of mega-projects to regenerate neighbourhoods continuing to be favoured by governments around the world, this book is sure to be of interest to all those working in the urban studies field.’
-Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo, Norway
‘Narrated as a drama and hugely readable, her splendid book shows why anthropology matters, and not just to anthropologists.’
- Adam Kuper, Professor of Social Anthropology, Brunel University
'A wonderfully enlightening and entertaining book. An anthropologist delivers an insider's account of life in inner London, and makes sense of the educational failure of working class white boys'
- Patrick Butler, Editor, Society Guardian
'A compelling, often uncomfortable journey of self-discovery, as well as a fascinating insight into class and education in Britain. Educational Failure stands out for its honesty, its bravery and its originality'
- Michael Holland, ex-Bermondsey playwright and film maker
'This book should be read by teachers, parents, academics and policy makers, and by Bermondsey people. If they do, this book can be a catalyst for change'
- Andrew Gimson, Daily Telegraph
'A brilliant and highly entertaining study of a neglected subject'
kind words
