I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work (SSESW), a member of ARK, and a member of the Centre for Children's Rights at Queen's University. I am interested in research which seeks to make a difference to the lives of children and young people, particularly in relation to their emotional health and wellbeing.

My research projects focus primarily on measuring young people's and children’s wellbeing using standardised questionnaires such as KIDSCREEN, GHQ etc. within large-scale surveys. I am the Director of an annual online survey of Primary 7 children in Northern Ireland - Kids’ Life and Times (KLT). I am also involved with colleagues in the Centre for Children’s Rights, developing surveys on a range of projects that involve a rights-based approach to research with children and young people. Recent projects have included assessing children's rights in Ukraine, their feelings aboutthe extent to which their views were taken into consideration during Covid-19 and the development of questionnaires to measure children's attitudes to 'good relations' in Northern Ireland.

Current and Recent Research Projects

Department of Education (2015-2024) Monitoring Shared Education among 10/11 and 16-yeard olds in Northern Ireland (with Prof Dirk Schubotz).

Mental Health Champion for Northern Ireland (2023) Assessing the mental health of children and young people in Northern Ireland (with Prof Dirk Schubotz).

SportNI (2023) Measuring attitudes to sport among children and young people in Northern Ireland (with Prof Dirk Schubotz).

NSPCC (2023) Assessing children's views and experiences in the context of the financial crisis (with Prof Dirk Schubotz).

Terres des Hommes (2023) Assessing the experiences of children and young people in Ukraine during the on-going war with Russia (with Prof Laura Lundy and Prof Bronagh Byrne).

The Executive Office (2022) Developing questionnaires with children and young people to be used as measures of attitudes towards good relations in Northern Ireland.

Terres des Hommes and QUB (2020-2021) Assessing children's views on their rights during Covid-19 (with Prof Laura Lundy).

Childen's Commissioner for Jersey (2019-2020) Children's Lives in Jersey (with Professor Laura Lundy, Dr Mary Louise Corr, Dr Michelle Templeton). 

Arts Council Northern Ireland (2019-2020) Evaluation of the Arts and Older People Programme (with Dr Paula Devine).

Department of Education (2015-2019) Monitoring Shared Education, bullying and wellbeing among primary and post-primary schools in Northern Ireland (with Dr Dirk Schubotz).

EU (2017-2019) Participation for Protection (with Dr Siobhan McAlister, Professor Laura Lundy, Dr Karen Winter, Dr Nicola Carr and partners in Austria, Belgium, Germany, RoI, Romania.

Education Endowment Fund (2016-2018) Evaluation of the Reciprocal Reading Programme (with Dr Liam O'Hare, Professor Paul Connolly, Dr Sheila McConnellogue, Dr Andy Biggart, Dr Patrick Stark).

I teach modules on quantative methods and statistical analysis.

I am Programme Director for the Masters in Social Research (MRes) in SSESW.