About
I have recently returned to academia after a 5-year hiatus working as a complex needs support worker with rough sleepers in Cardiff. At Swansea I am currently lecturing in Criminology, drawing on my extensive professional experience working with offenders and the criminal justice system.
I am an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in politics, international relations, and sociology. My current research focuses broadly on political sociology and sociological theory, with a particular interest in British and Welsh politics (particularly national identity and devolution), the sociology of education, trade unions and the labour process, critical military studies, crime and prisons, and ethnographic methods. The thread which unites these discrete topics is my long standing interest in social class and its influence on identity, political behaviour, and more.
My research has been published in journals including Nations and Nationalism, Capital and Class, and British Politics. In 2021 I edited the book The Welsh Way: Essays on Neoliberalism and Devolution. In January 2023 I published my book A Nation of Shopkeepers, exploring the role of the petty bourgeoisie in the modern class structure and its impact on populist politics. In 2024 I will publish a monograph based on my PhD- British Wales: Class, Place and Everyday Nationhood- with the University of Wales Press.
I am a public sociologist and have made numerous television and radio appearances, discussing my research and providing political analysis for BBC News, BBC Wales News, BBC Radio Wales and Novara Media. I regularly give public lectures and recently discussed my latest book on the petty bourgeoisie on Radio 4’s flagship sociology programme ‘Thinking Allowed’. I have written for popular platforms such as Jacobin, The New Statesman, Open Democracy, The Conversation, Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, and more.