I am a health historian of 20th and early 21st century Britain. I specialise in the history of ‘(un)healthy’ industries, technologies, patient(-consumer) narratives, mass media and stigma. My interdisciplinary research intersects the medical humanities, policy, and cultural, business and communication studies. I have published extensively on tanning culture and maternal mental illness.

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 Trust funded, 2024-30). My strand explores the gambling industry’s sponsorship of sports (football, F1, rugby, cricket and tennis).

From 2021-23, 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 Trust funded).

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 (Warwick). From 2015-19, funded by the Wellcome Trust, I completed my Medical Humanities MA/PhD on tanning technologies, focusing on sunbeds (University of Warwick), and a Secondment Fellowship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.

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

In my free time, I love going on long walks and runs (propelled by coffee, chatting or music), reading and watching sci-fi books and films, and finally, gaming, especially VR sports, strategy-based RPGs and third-person historical or dystopian narratives.