Summary

I am a senior lecturer in the School of Education, Language and Linguistics at the University of Portsmouth. I have a sustained track record of research (four external grants), academic (18 publications, H-index 13) and civic impact (invited keynote spakers, consultant on toolkits and stakeholder training with non-academic collaborations). 

My research is focused on understanding the everyday lives of people who are often underrepresented in public life and the development of approaches for social justice and participation. I have expertise in ethnographic and visual approaches to research and in working with 'Gypsy, Roma and Traveller' ('GRT') communities across Europe, working towards more inclusive public spaces (e.g. the media) and professional practices (e.g. in social care).

Biography

I was awarded my PhD in Cultural Studies from King's College London in 2008. My PhD focused on the integration of Roma ('Gypsy') minorities in Hungary, comparing the everyday lives of children and their families to broader policy and media discourses on integration and racism. The thesis was supervised by Professor Ben Rampton and Dr Roxy Harris, funded by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) scholarship (1+3). The PhD was awarded with no amendments. I completed post-doctoral research in Budapest with a British Academy Institutional Visit Grant in 2008.

Since joining the University of Portsmouth in 2009, I have won several competitive awards to further my research on the visual and oral self-representations of Roma people in Hungary, including two British Academy Small Grants (2012-14, and 2017-19). I was awarded an ESRC grant to work with LGBTIQ Roma activists and artists, using queer research informed interventions (2019-2020), leading to a new series of stock images and interactive exhibitions that challenge dominant (mis) representations of 'the Gypsies'.

I have also received international awards, gaining two fellowships from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest (20114 and 2015) as well as a prestigious writing fellowship at the Madrid Institute of Advanced Studies (MIAS) (April - June 2019). My international recognition also includes gaining European Commission Funds (2014) to run a workshop on Roma integration and the invitation to be a reviewer for the Commission's research funding streams from 2012. I am regularly asked to be a keynote speaker at academic, practice and policy conferences and workshops.

Research interests

My research focuses on the everyday lives of people, with a commitment to the art of listening and paying attention to self-representations. I then analyse how people’s self-representations differ from public representations, such as those used by the media or policy. I look at what this interface between the public and local representations means for the way people integrate into their communities and how they perceive their position in society. Hence my published work falls into three threads:

(i) Questioning how we can best access and attend to the voice of the child and other research participants in research and practice.

(ii) Understanding the power of visual representations (e.g. in the media, social policy and popular culture) and how research into visualities can challenge misleading images.

(iii) Focusing on the way language (and communication) is used in the research process and how that affect the way we (researchers) present that research and therefore affect the way we represent our research participants.

My research is regularly published in leading journals such as The Sociological Review, Ethnicities, Identities and Ethnic and Racial Studies. I have also co-edited a book on Learning and Using Languages in Ethnographic Research (2019, Multilingual Matters).

My current research interests focus on the uses of visual representations to connect people to their local communities, addressing misrepresentations, inequalities and discrimination.