Teaching

My teaching style is underpinned by a commitment to critical social research, which seeks to interrogate and expose relations of social power inherent in people-environment relations. This approach allows students to conceive of their learning not just as a disinterested exercise, but as part of a project of social transformation. 

I have over a decade of experience in teaching research methods and I emphasise the importance of scholarly integrity and precise technique in designing and implementing research projects. Materials drawn from my personal experiences and involvement in funded research are used as a matter of course to expose the judgements made in research design as well as problems encountered in administering specific data collection techniques. Through these reflections I weave a path between the published orthodoxies and real-world ‘messiness’ of social and historical research.

My strengths are in qualitative research techniques, particularly historical analysis, which is frequently utilised in lectures to contextualise cultural and environmental phenomena, through deep reading of texts and use of archive materials. Workshop-style exercises delivered in research training modules encourage students to critically reflect upon the practice of research, the nature of knowledge construction, and the authority of scientific knowledge and its contribution to the public good.


Modules taught

GY451   Human Geography
GY452   Cities and Social Change
GY471   Academic Learning and Field Skills
GY572   Professional Practice
GY573   Research Design and Analysis with Dissertation Planning
GY553   Everyday Spaces and Social Justice
GY651   Gender, Sex and the Body
GY690   Independent Project