Staff Profile

My interdisciplinary PhD thesis Labouring at the Interface: Exploring the rhythms and resistances of working in London’s food delivery gig economy combined a covert ethnography (wherein I worked for two leading food delviery platforms in London), and overt ethnography of the trade union representing their riders.

This direct, hands on experience with the work and unionisation elements demonstrated the high levels of skill workers develop and deploy in their daily lives, and how these interactions form the basis of subsequent resistance efforts.

I am currently turning the work into a monograph to be released straight to paperback in the UK and US in spring 2026.

Since completing my PhD studies, I have worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Royal Holloway, and Oxford University:

"Covid-19 mutual aid groups and their lessons for post-crisis community care". This study investigated the mutual aid practices people engaged in throughout the pandemic to support each other and survive. We produced a Manifesto for Mutual Aid, an interactive documentary and a feature-length documentary film alongside other academic journal outputs, all of which are available for free here - https://mutualaid.uk/ (Royal Holloway, 2021-2022)

"Just Transitions in Australia: Moving towards low carbon lives across policy, industry and practice". This study investigates the possibility and promise of transitioning away from fossil fuel and carbon heavy lives in Australia. The full report and shortened summary are available here: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/projects/just-transitions-in-australia-moving-towards-low-carbon-lives-across-policy-industry-and-practice/ (Royal Holloway, 2021-2022)

"Fairwork". In this project, I worked across international contexts (UK, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, Philippines and Singapore) to investigate the lived experience of platform work internationally as part of a 250-person team spanning 38 countries. I worked with fellow researchers, workers, unions, government ministers, international organisations (like the World Bank and ILO) and companies (including Amazon, Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Just Eat and Stuart) to create positive changes for workers in the platform economy. The changes we have been part of making have improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of gig workers world-wide. The project website is available here https://fair.work/ (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, 2018-2020; 2022-2024).

I completed my Undergraduate (BA Geography, 2012-2015) Masters (MA Cultural Geography, 2015-2016) and PhD (Geography and Management, 2016-2022) at Royal Holloway, University of London.

As a labur geographer, I am most interested in investigating new and emerging forms of work and the role technology has in shaping our work lives, our cities, and our societies. My research to date has focused on the platform economy - specifically the lived experiences of working in the food delivery gig economy both in the UK and internationally. I am also motivated by deepening understandings of workers' skill and knowledge development and the means through which this forms the basis for resistance at work, even in jobs commonly thought of as 'low skill'. Indeed, a primary aim of my current writing and research is to undermine the societal perceptions of skill and value that leave many workers left behind or invisibilised in the national consciousness.

My future research agenda is to deepen pluralistic concerputalisations of work that take into account the various intersectional experiences people have in society.

My research ethos is that we - as academics, researchers, and teachers - are all a part of the dynamic field upon which contemporary working conditions occur and that - as such - we must act to change them for the benefit of workers across the globe. My research is therefore oriented toward creating impact and driving positive change through methodologies the platform the perspective of workers to narrate their own stories and amplify the demands they articulate.

I am deeply concerned with qualitative and ethnographic research methodologies and work hard to develop and deploy suitable tools for researching the contemporary work place.

I am currently writing my first sole-authored monograph investigating the skilled nature of food delivery platform work and resistance.

I am open to future collaborative writing projects, so please get in touch if there's anything you'd like to discuss.

I teach on the following courses:

• GEO1018 - Geographical Analysis
• GEO2099 - Economic Geography
• GEO2111 - Doing Human Geography Research: Theory and Practice
• GEO2236 - Between Two Unions: Ireland Human Geography Field Course
• GEO3114 - Local and Regional Development
• GEO3099 - Undergraduate Dissertation Supervision

I am available to supervise Masters dissertations.

For potential PhD study, please get in touch.