I research the intersection of commercial industries, ‘health’ technologies, marketing, and public health in contemporary Britain, often through a focus on patient(-consumer) narratives, mass-media representations, and stigma. My interdisciplinary research links the medical humanities with policy, as well as cultural, business, and communication studies. I have published substantially on tanning culture and maternal mental illness.

I am the editor for The Gazette - a monthly digital newsletter for the Society for the Social History of Medicine.

Based at the University of Glasgow, I am working on Professors Anna Greenwood, Alex Mold and Heather Wardle’s project, Kicking the Habit: Historicising ‘Addictive’ Sport Sponsorship in Britain, 1965-2025 (Wellcome funded, 2024-30). My strand explores the gambling industry’s sponsorship of sports. I am currently developing a co-authored monograph for Oxford University Press and sole-authored articles on the corporate tactics, marketing strategies, and public health interventions related to gambling sports sponsorship.

I led the development of our interactive website, which Digitally Maps Unhealthy Sports Sponsorship. We invite all types of memorabilia submissions from past and present day. In my research, I am passionate about listening to people and contextualising ‘everyday’ consumerism in Britain.

From 2021-24, I was a Research Fellow on Emeritus Professor Hilary Marland’s project The Last Taboo of Motherhood?: Postnatal Mental Disorders in Twentieth-Century Britain (University of Warwick, Wellcome funded). I examined how mothers (and fathers) both narrated and experienced parental mental illness, particularly through interviews, and television, radio and print press testimony.

From 2020-21, I undertook an Early Career Fellowship on the Medical Humanities China-UK Exchange Programme (Universities of Strathclyde, Shanghai and Manchester) and an IAS Fellowship (University of Warwick). From 2015-19, funded by Wellcome, I completed my Medical Humanities MA and PhD on tanning technologies, focusing on sunbeds (University of Warwick), and a Secondment Fellowship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. As a result, I am part of NHS Scotland’s ‘Sunbed Safety Review Group’. We review and analyse current legislation.

I am passionate about using research to inform policy more effectively and enjoy making history accessible to the public. I have provided expertise through podcasts, national newspapers (BBC and the Scotsman), digital press (Refinery29 and I-News), radio (Clyde 1), and also archive, campaign, and government groups (NHS Scotland).

In my free time, I love long walks (propelled by coffee, chatting, or music), as well as reading books and watching films across all sci-fi genres. I also enjoy gaming, especially third-person historical (and/or dystopian) narratives, and strategy-based RPGs.