I gained my PhD from the University of Leeds in 2001 and was a Teaching Fellow in the Schooll of Computing in Leeds before coming to Manchester in 2005. My teaching and research interests lie particularly with distance and online learning, and how we learn to make good judgments about information and technology in a digital world.

I have published three books on this latter topic: Information Obesity (2009), Radical Information Literacy (2014) and Mapping Information Landscapes (2020).

I was Director of Teaching and Learning Strategy at the Manchester Institute of Education from 2016-2019.

I was Programme Director of the MA: Digital Technologies, Communication and Education from its launch in 2007 until 2016.

In 2012 I was recipient of a Catalyst Award from Blackboard, for 'Communications Strategies' in my course unit The Development of Educational Technology; the only European winner of such an award that year. In 2013 I was named the University's "Most Innovative Lecturer" by Manchester students.

Critical theory and education; information practice and information literacy; visualisation and mapping of information landscapes; workplace learning and professional development; learning in communities, ans informal learning; philosophy of learning and communication (Mikhail Bakhtin, Jürgen Habermas).