Staff profile

Email: U3VzYW4uRHVubmV0dEBlZC5hYy51aw==
Phone: +44(0)131 6503814
Room: 3.07

Roles and Responsibilities

Year Three Head 2012/13
Member of CHSS Admissions and Recruitment Group
Personal Tutor
Course co-ordinator Business Research Methods 2, core course for UG 3rd year cohort.
Course co-ordinator Understanding Brands, optional course for MSc Marketing/Marketing and Business Analysis.

Background

I joined the Business School as Lecturer in Marketing in January 2010 after completing an ESRC-funded PhD. in Marketing at the University of Stirling. Prior to this I undertook an MA English Language and Literature at the University of St Andrews (1999) and an MSc Marketing, University of Stirling (2003). Before re-entering academia, I worked for the cancer charity Myeloma UK in patient services management and delivery (1999-2002).

Research Interests

My research is conducted within the interpretivist consumer research tradition; areas of interest are consumer vulnerability and coping, consumer identity, collective practices, and research methods. I have a longstanding interest in the experience of illness and the consumption of healthcare. My current research explores the practices through which consumers collectively transform themselves in a market context. It focuses on a site where selfhood has fallen under intense pressure - a community framed by the condition of serious illness, the cancer Multiple Myeloma. In a healthcare setting, which has undergone (and is still undergoing) a significant process of “marketisation”, it investigates an under-researched aspect of communal consumption – the sharing of social support resources in order to realise identity transition and consequently, agency in service interactions.

I am currently Principle-Investigator for an ESRC Seminar Series focusing on Vulnerable Consumers, with Dr Kathy Hamilton, University of Strathclyde and Dr Maria Piacentini, University of Lancaster, 2012-2015.

Dissertation Areas Supervised

Consumer culture
Qualitative research methods
Consumer identity
Healthcare and health
Collectives, subcultures and communities
Critical marketing
Brands and Branding