About
I am interested in questions on the relations between the body and the environment as mediated through experience. I approach such questions by considering the different rationalities at work in performance and the worlds that are shaped by them. In particular, I examine them through the concept of compulsivity, which is a pathologised form of action that people feel urged to do but cannot readily explain.
My work situates on the intersections of cultural, health, and disability geography, the medical humanities, continental philosophy, and the neuropsychiatric and psychological sciences of 'neurodiverse' 'ways of being'; in particular Tourette syndrome. Unpicking the ways in which experience is constructed through a postphenomenological lens, it contributes to posthumanist efforts to understand human action as ecologically constituted. Employing qualitative methodologies, and working with mobile eye-tracking, my work introduces critical social scientific approaches to the study of Tourette syndrome.
For my Doctoral research (2014-2018 - Cardiff University) I worked closely with people with Tourette syndrome, who perform compulsive acts compelled by a sensory urge. And the (extended) ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2019-2021 - Swansea University) allowed me to turn the outcomes into a book and extend the theory to better understand the perceptions and experiences of people with dementiaand other 'neurodiversities'.
My monograph Compulsive Body Spaces (Routledge) is most comprehensive of my work to date..
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Currently, I'm a Research Officer on the EU-funded 3-year project 'COVINFORM'. I work with Professor Sergei Shubin (Geography) and Professor Louise Condon (Nursing) as part of the Swansea-based team to develop a case study to understand how certain groups in Wales have been more vulnerable to COVID-19 infection, illness, and death than others.
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In the Geography Department I have taught urban, political, and health geography (UG) and qualitative social scientific research methods (PG).