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Biography

I am a sociologically oriented critical social psychologist who joined the ����ý in August 2018, shortly after completing my PhD at the University of Helsinki, Finland. My PhD, which was fully funded by Finnish grant foundations and a salaried PhD position at the University of Helsinki, was a methodological and empirical investigation dealing with representations and deployments of social values in constructions of identity and ideology. My focus was on how values that are typically assumed as enhancing societal wellbeing – such as equality and tolerance – are formulated in exclusionary ways and used ideologically to demarcate boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’. I also considered how being explicitly marked as psychiatrically, medically and socially ‘abnormal’ in relation to institutionalised norms on “sociability” and/or “sex/gender” might interact with how social values are negotiated in identification and in ideological work.

At the University of Helsinki, I have taught a methodological module for master's students in the social sciences entitled 'Methodologies on Discourse and Identity'. I still teach this every spring at the University of Helsinki, as an intensive three-day workshop. I am also an expert in the Atlas.ti, a computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) package.

My work is inspired by social semiotics, feminist and intersectional theory, critical discourse studies, and critical realist ontologies. I have methodological expertise in critical discourse analysis, critical discursive psychology, and positioning theory.

Research interests

My research interests include motivated language and the discursive construction of values and identification, power and resistance from subjugated standpoints, nationalist and homonationalist discourse, and discursive and qualitative methodologies.

I have most recently been involved in two research projects. In one of these, I analysed Finnish parliamentary talk in communicative contexts of migration and immigrants. My focus was on how discourses on Finnish gender equality provides readily available cultural resources for building and mobilising xenophobic and misogynist positions in the context of meaning-making around gendered violence.

My other research, which was situated in the British national context, dealt with LGBTQI+ young people's experiences of sexual harassment and violence. My focus is on how these experiences were enabled by cisheteronormativity.

Teaching responsibilities

I contribute to module coordination and teaching of modules on Sociology BSc (Hons), Sociology with Psychology BSc (Hons), and Sociology with Criminology BSc (Hons) courses, as well as the Sociology MSc course.

My main teaching contributions are in Social and Cultural Psychology (L4), Critical Psychology (L5), Discursive Psychology (L5), and the MSc Dissertation (Sociology) module. I also contribute to teaching in the Dissertation (Sociology) (L6) module, Sociological Research Methods (L7), and Identities and Inequalities (L7).