About
I'm AF Warr Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Law and Social Justice, Co-Director of Centre for Health, Arts, Society & Environment (CHASE) and currently Visiting Research Scholar at New Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE) at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
I completed my BA and PhD in Sociology at Monash University in Melbourne in the 1990s. Since coming to Britain in 2000 I have held research fellowships and teaching posts at Lancaster University, University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and University of Liverpool from 2006. My research focus has involved a Sociology of Harm Reduction and Recovery. Monographs Object Matters: condoms, adolescence and time (MUP, 2008) and Social Science of the Syringe: a sociology of drug injecting (Routledge, 2017) examine the history of safe sex education and Needle Exchange programs from a socio-material perspective. My recent research monograph Problematising Water: An experiment on the edges of interdisciplinarity (Routledge, 2026), is a manifestation of thinking with water across a range of disciplines including human geography, sociology, anthropology, STS, and ethnomethodology.
Current research involves a UKRI funded project on climate change adaptation and mitigation investigating contemporary Indigenous art practices. The project is part of a NFRF-I international research collaboration on water and Indigenous practices with colleagues from Canada, South Africa, Switzerland and Australia.
Prizes or Honours
- Visiting Senior Research Fellow (Ca' Foscari University of Venice, 2024)
- Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching (University of Liverpool, 2010)
- AF Warr Memorial Lectureship (University of Liverpool, 2009)
Funded Fellowships
- Anglo-Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship (Royal Academy of Engineering, London, 2001)
- Simon Marks Post-doctoral Research Fellow (Faculty of Social Sciences and Law, The University of Manchester, 2001)