Biography

I am a sociologically oriented critical social psychologist who joined the University of Portsmouth in August 2018, shortly after completing my PhD at the University of Helsinki, Finland. My PhD was a methodological and empirical investigation dealing with productions and deployments of social values in identification processes. 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.

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 discourse, and discursive and qualitative methodologies.

As part of a post-doc project, 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 most recent research, which was situated in the British national context, dealt with LGBTQI+ young people's experiences of sexual harassment and violence. My focus was on how these experiences were enabled by cisheteronormativity.

My current research deals with anti-woke discourses. The project is entitled “Doing Meritocracy and Free Speech in the War on Woke”, and is in collaboration with Joseph Burridge (University of Portsmouth) and Satu Venäläinen (University of Helsinki). The research aims to examine how anti-woke discourses are built and used in online social media platforms in ways that may protect the ‘right’ to discriminate, as well as how they are resisted. 

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).