I have been a member of the ARK Ageing programme at Queen's since 2014. I have found the Faculty of Arts and Humanities an extremely fruitful environment in which to work and so have developed a range of inter-disciplinary studies of ageing with colleagues Paula Devine, Leonie Hannan and Sian Barber. Initiatives include the Lively Project funded by the Wellcome Trust, which used material culture to explore the meaning of living a long life. I am also collaborating with Jane Lugea on an AHRC funded project called Dementia in the Minds of Characters and Readers.

Former projects have included Arts, Humanities Research Council research network grant with the Chinese University in Hong Kong, and Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at QUB. Paula Devine and I also established the Northern Irish branch of the British Society of Gerontology with colleagues in Ulster University in 2015. I was elected serve on the Executive Committee of the British Society of Gerontology in 2015 and was re-elected in 2018. I am responsible for international liaison for BSG. I am a member of the editorial board of Ageing & Society. My work has been published in Ageing and Society, Journal of Aging Studies, Action Research, Critical Social Policy, Journal of Women and Aging, Life Writing, the European Journal of Ageing and Gender & Soceity. 

Previous work made a contribution to policy formulation and critique in the area of civil society engagement with the State, in particular on corporatism and policies for disadvantaged groups in the Republic of Ireland. I was also one of team of researchers on Changing Generations, a longitudinal, grounded theory study of solidarity between generations in the Republic of Ireland (http://www.sparc.tcd.ie/generations/). In recent years, my work has taken a more global focus, idetifying policy responses to ageing populations as problematic in a range of country context. 

I am keen to support applications for postgraduate research in any of the above areas but especially on furthering our understanding of ageing and older people, cultural gerontology, politics of ageing or gender scholars with an interest in ageing societies. 

In 2019 I was awarded a University Teaching Award in the student nominated category for excellence in my teaching in social policy and gerontology.

This award was the culmination of my work since joining the social policy team at QUB in January 2014, when I set out to embed social gerontology in the teaching programme at QUB. Social gerontology is now an optional module in level 2 through my module SPY2009 Ageing and the Lifecourse. I have also led the updating of entry level social policy through devising and convening Introducing Social Policy, which attracts over 100 first year undergraduate students.  In 2017, I convened Advanced Qualitative Research Methods. My latest innovation is a cross Faculty module on ageing called Questions for an Ageing World, which I am co-convening with Leonie Hannan at HAPP. I have written a textbook on social policy and ageing with Paul Nash at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, USA. The book will be published by Policy Press in September 2020. 

I am interested in supervising PhD students on social policy in ageing societies, cultural gerontology and projects relating to lifecourse issues which use either qualitative or participatory research methods.