My work is concerned with residential experiences (where people live and where they move to/from), their drivers (individual migration decision making and structural constraints such as housing markets) and their consequences (for life chances and outcomes of individuals, for neighbourhood composition and cohesion, and for governance). Much of my work examines ethnicity in relation to these themes. My work is broadly, and theoretically, framed by my interest in inequalities and social justice.

My approach is shaped by training in Geography followed by over a decade in an interdisciplinary context. I am an advocate of combining qualitative and quantitative research methods. My current work involves collaboration with academic partners in the UK (Manchester, Queen's University Belfast, Essex, King's College London, UCL, Edinburgh), Belgium (VU Brussels), the Netherlands (NIDI) and the USA (Dartmouth, Washington); and non-academic partners, particularly Black and Minority Ethnic Infrastructure in Scotland (BEMIS), the Institiute for Jewish Policy Research, the Race Equality Foundation and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

My current research examines ideas of community and equality; and social science methods for exploring these. My research interests focus on the following themes, often with cross-over between them:

Meanings of the local: Changing neighbourhoods, community and spatial inequalities

My current work on this theme is within the Centre for Population Change – Connecting Generations (CPC-CG) project that I lead around ‘community resilience and social coherence’. We are exploring intergenerational community using census and survey analyses with qualitative fieldwork in Dundee, Scotland. This builds on recent CPC work examining age segregation and housing affordability.  

I am also examining changing neighbourhoods in terms of ethnic diversity within the Geographies of Ethnic Diversity and Inequalities Project (GEDI). Our recent papers, using census data, trace neighbourhood ethnic group mixing and ethnic group deprivation.

This ongoing work builds on my past research funded by ESRC and the Leverhulme Trust including on socio-spatial factors associated with ethnic inequalities, ethnic group population change and neighbourhood belonging, and the roles of natural change and migration in local population change. My PhD and early postdoctoral work examined local belonging and community for asylum seekers and refugees in terms of local discourses around asylum seeker dispersal and the importance of urban greenspace.  My 2009 book ‘Sleepwalking to segregation? Challenging myths about race and migration’ (with Ludi Simpson) engages themes of ethnic segregation and the politics of local population change.

Finding home: Residential decision making, local belonging and housing inequalities

This theme is concerned with how and why people, more and less, get to live in favourable residential circumstances. I am examining this using mixed methods within the Centre for Population Change – Connecting Generations (CPC-CG) ‘community resilience and social coherence’ project and within the Geographies of Ethnic Diversity and Inequalities Project. We are using qualitative data on residential decision making and experience together with detailed small-area UK census data to examine internal migration patterns in terms of age, ethnicity and class.

My recent papers on this theme include interrogation of housing governance and racialisation in the UK and examination of demographic dynamics in urban areas in Belgium.

This current work extends my previous scholarship in the edited collections ‘Internal Migration’ (with Darren Smith, Keith Halfacree and Nigel Walford) and ‘Minority Internal Migration in Europe’ (with Gemma Catney); and in a number of papers on whether later-life migration is good for wellbeing and ethnic differences in internal migration including through a lifecourse perspective.

Ethnic inequalities and racism

I am currently examining ethnic inequalities in housing in the UK using Census 2021/22 data as part of the GEDI project and using the Evidence for Equality National Survey to understand experiences of racism and loneliness.

I have published a number of papers and book chapters on ethnic inequalities in housing and ‘slippery’ housing discrimination as well as recent reports for BEMIS on ethnic inequalities and racism in Scotland and, for the Centre for Homelessness Impact, on ethnicity and homelessness in Britain.

Since 2020 I have led the EVENS Project (Evidence for Equality National Survey) within the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity to document the lives of ethnic and religious minorities in Britain through a new national survey and to provide novel, robust data for equalities research and practice. The EVENS book (2023), available free-to-download from Policy Press, documents ‘Racism and ethnic inequalities in a time of crisis’.

Inclusive and Mixed Methods in Social Science

I am fascinated by the philosophy and practice of integrating evidence across epistemological and scalar boundaries. In the current project on ‘community resilience and social coherence’ (within the Centre for Population Change) we are actively exploring the mixing of methods (coming soon!). You can read some of my thoughts on the epistemological opportunities of mixed methods and the challenges of interdisciplinary and mixed methods research; and an example of mixed methods is a recent paper on racism, loneliness and social capital.  

Through the EVENS Project, we are implementing and testing novel non-probability survey methods, at a national scale, to generate social data that better include and represent minoritised populations. The EVENS dataset, and a Teaching Dataset, are freely available from the UK Data Service.  I am leading an ongoing, ESRC-Funded project on ‘Inclusive Survey Methods’ that will report in early 2026.

From the EVENS project we have recently published recommendations on measurement of racial discrimination.

In addition to these four themes of substantive focus in my current research, I have an ongoing interest in the history and future of Population Geography which you can read about in terms of epistemological opportunities, the possibilities of population thinking and a virtual special issue celebrating 50 years of Population Geography within RGS-IBG journals.

I joined the University of St Andrews in 2015 having previously worked at the University of Manchester (2006-2015) where I was Lecturer, Hallsworth Fellow, ESRC Fellow and member of the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research. Prior to that I worked in the Department of Geography at the University of Liverpool and at the University of Sheffield. I obtained my PhD in Geography (2004) from the University of Wales Swansea.

Within the School of Geography and Sustainable Development at St Andrews I have held the roles of Director of Research, Director of Postgraduate Studies andConvenor of the Population and Health Research Group, and have been a member of several School committees.

I am a founding member of the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), and a member of the ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC). I have previously been Chair of the RGS-IBG Population Geography Research Group, and a Visiting Scholar at TU Delft and the University of Washington. I have served in advisory roles (such as for the Office for National Statistics and Interface Demography at VU Brussels); have held editorial board roles (Urban Studies, Population, Space and Place); undertaking a number of PhD external examinations in the UK and elsewhere; and served on funding review and assessment panels. I am currently a member of the Office for National Statistics Ethnic Group Assurance Panel and the UK Household Longitudinal Study Strategic Advisory Board.

I teach across the Geography programme at sub-honours, honours and postgraduate levels on migration, ethnicity, integration, inequalities, neighbourhood, population change, research methods, and mixed methods, including:

• GG4250 Diversity, Inequality and Place (Convenor)
• GG1001 Geographies of Global Change (Inequalities/Population block)
• GG1002 A World in Crisis? (Convenor)
• GG1001/2 and GG2011/12 tutorials
• Honours Dissertation supervision