I gained my PhD from Abo Akademi University in Finland in 2001. Between 2002-2005 I worked at the Centre for Research on Families, Kinship & Childhood at the University of Leeds. I joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester in 2005. I was Co-Director of the Morgan Centre for the Research into Everyday Lives 2018-2022 and am currently the Head of Sociology. I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Specific research interests:

My previous research has focused on post-divorce parenting, lone motherhood and intergenerational relationships. Methodologically my interests span the use of mixed methods, qualitative interviewing, narrative analysis and biographical methods. My current work concerns the self, belonging and temporality, with a focus on ageing and migration.

I am currently involved in the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health, based at Kings College London, as the co-lead for the Innovative Methdods platform.

My recent research concerns ageing in the context of migration, ageing in place, and place and belonging, conducted as part of the following projects:

Centre of Excellence in Research on Ageing and Care in Finland, where I was involved in the Research Group 'Migration, ageing and care'  based at the University of Helsinki .

The expeirence of ageing in place over time, which was an ESRC-funded project that utilised qualitative longitudinal secondary data to explore experiences of ageing in place across different types of neighbourhood.

‘Place and belonging: What can we learn from the Claremont Court housing scheme?’, an AHRC-funded interdisciplinary project involving colleagues from architecture, sociology, social anthropology and social work.

Other past research projects include ‘Inter/Generational Dynamics’, which ran from 2008 to April 2011 and the cross-national comparative research project 'Children's socio-emotional wellbeing and daily family life in a 24-h economy' in collaboration with colleagues in Finland and the Netherlands (2012-2014).