Religious life; rationalisation, disenchantment, and unknowing; environmental change; and the relationship between human life and deep time in the UK and Mongolia. 

My research interests span environmental anthropology and the anthropology of religion, and I carry out fieldwork in the UK and Mongolia.

Recent projects have focused on how humans transform landscapes, and the political, economic, and cosmological conflicts around those transformations. Peatlands and former peatlands have become a particular fieldwork focus for this area of research. I am also interested in society's capacity to perceive and respond to environmental change, and how we become locked into particular patterns of living. Out of this has grown an interest in time horizons and the relationship between human life cycles and the deep time of geological processes, which I explore in my book An Anthropology of Deep Time (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

I also have an ongoing interest in the study of religion. My PhD (University of Cambridge, 2011) examined Catholic religious life through fieldwork in an English Benedictine monastery. Building on this, my most recent book The Vow of Stability (Scottish Universities Press, 2025) is a close study of the rhythms and challenges of community life, considering the importance of stability in a world of movement and fleeting interaction, and how religious institutions endure and change through time.

My current work combines these interests through a focus on how apocalypse shapes our time horizons, and the relevance of classic anthropological theories of millenarianism for the prospect of contemporary life. I am also interested in the relevance of monastic accounts of acedia, the 'noonday demon' - a loss of care - for a contemporary understanding of boredom, isolation, and depression.

The modules I currently convene are: Anthropology of Learning and Cognition; Anthropology of Catastrophe; and Methodological and Philosophical Issues in Social Anthropology. I have previously convened modules on Research Methods and Anthropology and History.

I chaired the most recent review of our sub-honours curriculum, which I then implemented during my time as Director of Teaching.