I completed my PhD in Sociology under the supervision of Professor John O’Neill in 2000 and went on to take up a lecturing post at Keele University the same year. I later became Senior Lecturer in Sociology (2009) and then Professor of Social and Political Theory (2020). Apart from working in the UK, I have also taught in Toronto, Canada and Tokyo and Yokohama in Japan.

My current research is focused on social imaginaries in an age of crisis and uncertainty, mental health and the future, and the politics of debt and the ways in which states of indebtedness cancel possibility. This work developed out of my previous research which was concerned with understanding conspiratorial thinking and meaning-making and the history of utopias and ideal worlds.   

Over the course of my career in the university sector, I have designed, led, and taught modules at every level of undergraduate and postgraduate education. I have supervised undergraduate, postgraduate taught, and postgraduate research (PhD) projects and examined dissertations in a range of subjects.  

Apart from his research and teaching, I am also an experienced university leader. I have been Programme Director of a range of programmes in different subject areas, worked as Director of Education across the social sciences and led on the transition to online teaching and learning during the Covid pandemic, and been Head of School in a period of radical social change and economic crisis.

Throughout my career, my practice has been informed by the basic principles of existentialism, phenomenology, and critical theory that explain that the individual should be free to critically interpret and make their own world. I developed this philosophy about the fundamental creativity of the individual through my work with John O’Neill who inspired my career and also taught me the essential importance of interaction, coaching, and the mentoring experience.

In the spirit of the generosity of John who taught me how to think critically and believe in my potential to make my own future, the founding principle of my educational practice is to ‘pay it forward’ and support others in the way that I was once supported in making my own world.