Personal Statement
I have been Professor of Human Geography at the University of Liverpool since 2023. I completed my BSc (1999) and PhD (2003) at the University of Liverpool, before working as research officer for the National Foundation for Educational Research (2003), research associate (2004-5) and lecturer in human geography (2005-7) at the University of Liverpool, senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University (2007-9) and lecturer in human geography and medical humanities at Durham University (2010-11). I returned to the University of Liverpool as lecturer in human geography in 2011.

Research Overview
My research is, broadly speaking, driven by a concern with the ways in which particular spaces and institutional policies and practices produce and reinforce ideas about acceptable forms of embodiment. I’m interested in how spaces and institutions are experienced differently by different people, and in thinking about how we might create more inclusive spaces. My previous work has explored this in relation to fatness, including work on the (bio)politics of anti-obesity policies in schools, public health, urban planning, and geographic scholarship, and on the ways in which social, material and political economic factors interact in spaces of commercial air travel in ways that produce symbolic and material violence for fat passengers. My research has also considered the role of friendship and curiosity in relation to place-based understandings of wellbeing, has explored the geographies of youth and engaging young people in political histories, has considered the embodied politics of research on fatness, and the potential for fat studies and fat activism to play a part in the development of the Critical Medical Humanities. Most recently, I’ve been working with 'Chronic Illness Inclusion' (CII) to look at gendered experiences of disbelief and disregard within health and social care for people in England living with Energy Limiting Conditions (ELC) and the potential for creative methods to help imagine better futures of care for people with ELC. Thanks to an ISRF fellowship, I have also been researching the experiences of academics with ELC with the goal to re-imagine a more accessible academia. Theoretically, my work lies at the intersection of feminist, post-structural, queer and crip theory and contributes to work in Human Geography and interdisciplinary fields such as Fat Studies and the Critical Medical Humanities. I am committed to research done in partnership with people, activists and third sector organisations and have been lucky to work with some fantastic activists, artists, youth-led and disabled people’s organisations.