About
I am a feminist criminologist, a teacher, and a storyteller. I am passionate about Dyslexic thinking, innovation in teaching and learning, cross-faculty working, and the student experience. I want to do things differently.
I entered higher education via a non-traditional trajectory, dropping out of university the first time around (University of Liverpool!). This has given me a strong commitment to the student experience, and providing a safe, inclusive and welcoming teaching space for students. My own experience has imprinted a strong commitment to widening participation and creating a more inclusive and welcoming academia. I recognise the value of lived experience and different ways of producing and sharing knowledge.
My strengths lie in the capacity building of others, identifying patterns of delivery and potentials for collaboration, and strategic thinking. I am committed to leadership within higher education and empowering colleagues through supportive growth.
As part of my commitment to widening participation I also work with the central WP team as a student mentor; deliver multiple summer school sessions; a school outreach session (Yr12 and Y13); a lecture for the Liverpool Scholars' Programme; Go Higher outreach; Return to Learn session; and have also delivered a lecture for the Go Higher Access Programme. I am also a tutor for Realising Opportunities at the University of Liverpool. As someone from a socio-economically deprived background this work is very important to me. I am working with Deonne Hill and team as they develop Liverpool Plus. I also deliver annual guest lectures to Wirral Met College and LJMU. I am the Widening Participation Lead for my department, where I deliver taster day sessions and outreach lectures. I am also the SSLC Chair and Student Engagement Lead for my department.
It is a pleasure to attend events such as Go Higher graduation, Liverpool Scholars graduation, Liverpool EQ+ awards, and support all of our students.
Nationally, I sit on the QAA Subject Benchmark group for Sociology. Regionally, I sit on the Adult Merseyside Adult Sexual Exploitation, Sex Work, and Survival Sex Strategy group and I am the Events Officer for Interdisciplinary Research for Liverpool City Region.
At university-level, I am a member of the Curriculum 2027 / Liverpool Learning Framework Implementation and Delivery group. I served as Lead for the Curriculum Project Interdisciplinarity Working Group was the Lead for the Sustainability Working Group. These roles are working under sponsor Professor Gavin Brown, CIE and the Strategic Change team with Therese Choudhary as Project Manager. I am also a member of the Task and Finish Group: A coordinated approach to student learning support working Matt Greenhall (Director of Libraries, Museums and Galleries) and Alison Wells (Director of Student Engagement and Enhancement).
My research interests can be understood in terms of:
Processes of vulnerability
How sex workers are constructed as vulnerably in policy, yet oftentimes simultaneously have that vulnerability erased upon contact with the criminal justice system
Holding conflicting and competing harms and needs in tension
Displacement of harm and risk
Sex industry and sexual exploitation
Violence against women and girls
Organised crime groups (OCGs)
Much of my work focuses on stigma and displaced and dispersed harms. I will continue to develop multidisciplinary responses with colleagues internationally.
Globally, I have an interest in the potential of working with Chinese criminology, I recently delivered the keynote paper on sex work and the limitations of criminal law to an international delegation at University of Liverpool/ Association of Chinese Criminology and Criminal Justice in the US conference. This was seed-funded by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
I have an international visiting scholar from Hong Kong University: Pan Fan. Alongside my colleague Eddie Shuai Wei, we are concentrating on novel research bringing together Chinese bride trafficking, and situating this within the wider landscape of violence against women and girls, and using sex trafficking and sexual exploitation frameworks. Fan's research is Deconstructing Cross-Border Bride Trafficking Networks in China: A Social Network Analysis Perspective
I have a current Faculty of Health and Life Sciences Participatory Research Funding grant (2025) with Dr Janine Yazdi-Doughty, School of Dentistry: 'Sex worker oral health: understanding research priorities and the acceptability of oral health outreach with students' (£5000). We have also been awarded £1200 Inspire summer internships grant, and a £2000 grant from IAA Diverse Outputs competition 2025 ‘Oral health needs, experiences and research priorities of sex workers in Liverpool: Exploring the perspectives of sex workers and dental professionals’. This is innovative interdisciplinary work that will lead to significant impact.
In Dec 2023 I was awarded a BBSRC and ESRC Impact Acceleration Account grant for the amount of £22,985 with Dr John Tulloch: The analysis of solicitors’ records to contextualise events surrounding dog bites and attacks.
I am currently developing several other grants, and disseminating key outputs from current projects.
My doctorate focused on the experiences of women sex workers in prison and I have 23 years' experience of the sex industry. My interests centre around processes of vulnerability and exploitation, and in particular, contested perceptions of vulnerability. In a recently published chapter I critique the role of women's centres who facilitate the punishment of women thus effectively being their 'sisters' keepers' within the widening web of governmentality. This speaks to the importance of feminist criminologists and feminist legal scholars to interrogate the spectrum of decarceration where harms might be displaced to community settings and alternative spaces.
I am keen to share best practice and pedagogical innovations with colleagues across the university and beyond. I sit on the ULTRA panel and I also act as an ULTRA mentor to ensure that there is quality assurance on the award of teaching accreditation across the university. I have had 17 mentees (former and current).
I have a particular interest in a pedagogy of hope or care; experiential learning; real-world/ grand challenges; Living Labs; enterprise education and entrepreneurship. These give students the opportunity to develop a strong sense of social justice in action; and make students see what is possible with their studies, and their lives. I enjoy going beyond the traditional classroom, and exposing students to a range of spaces, and activities.
I led an alternative dissertation capstone module SOCI347 Creative Consult: Dissertation by Portfolio, on which students work cross-faculty with Engineering students MECH327. You can watch a video about the Creative Consultants by clicking on the publications tab. The university Living Lab Programme was launched in May 2025, and my project can be found here: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/about/sustainability/topics/living-labs/past-projects/
I also run our largest optional 3rd year module (215 students in 24/25 and 149 students in 25/26) called SOCI349: Crime, Justice and the Sex Industry. You can read about this by clicking the publications tab. My assessment has created a step-change for Wirral Met College Level 5 Sociology of Sex Work module, part of a 2+2 programme validated by the University of Chester.
Being deeply committed to the development of scholarship in my area, I regularly review for eleven journals, multiple book publishers and I serve on the international editorial board for Palgrave Advances in Sex Work Studies. I have recently book reviewed both proposals and manuscripts for Bloomsbury, Policy Press, Amsterdam University Press, Springer, and Palgrave Macmillan. I have been appointed as an Associate Editor of Developing Academic Practice journal, University of Liverpool Press.
I am committed to developing arts-based practice and collaborations, having worked with FACT Liverpool, Bloc Projects Sheffield and Tate Liverpool through the Tate Exchange programme.
I am proud to be Dyslexic: expect creative ideas and creative spelling.
Prizes or Honours
- Phil Leonard Award for Outstanding Student Experience (Team) (University of Liverpool, 2025)
- Learning & Teaching Student Experience Award (University of Liverpool, 2024)
- Commended for Innovation of the Year (University of Liverpool Staff Awards, 2024)
- Learning and Teaching Fellowship (University of Liverpool, 2023)
- Greatest Contribution to the Student Experience (University of Liverpool Staff Awards, 2023)
- Commended for Innovation of the Year (University of Liverpool Staff Awards, 2023)
- Teacher of the Year (HSS) (Liverpool Guild of Students, 2023)
- Commended for Outstanding Support (Liverpool Guild of Students, 2023)
- Senior Fellow (Advance HE, 2022)
- Lecturer of the Year (University of Liverpool, 2022)
- British Society of Criminology Women, Crime and Criminal Justice Network Paper Prize 2022 (British Society of Criminology, 2022)
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Higher Education Academy, 2022)
- Tate Exchange (University of Liverpool, 2022)
- Learning and Teaching Fellowship (University of Liverpool, 2021)
- Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Award (University of Liverpool, 2021)
- Nomination for Most Innovative Teacher of the Year (Times Higher Education, 2021)
- Nomination for The Innovator Award (Practical Pedagogy Conference University of Lincoln, 2021)
- Visiting Fellow (University of Leeds, 2019)
- Ph.D Scholarship (Centre of Applied Social Research, Leeds Beckett University, 2013)
- Best in Class Sociology BA (Hons) (Liverpool john Moores University, 2012)
- David McEvoy Prize for Sociology (Liverpool John Moores University, 2012)