• Critical social theory (esp. Jurgen Habermas)
• Social movements (esp. labour movements, trade unions, and feminist movements)
• The intersections between personal life and political activism
• The role of interpersonal social networks in political participation (esp. participation in covert/militant forms of activism)
  
• Non-organised, individual forms of protest
• Co-housing and personal social networks
• Qualitative social network analysis and mixed-method SNA
  

My past research critically engaged with Jurgen Habermas's New Social Movement theory, and applied his concept of 'colonisation' to issues of UK public sector restructuring and trade union mobilisation (with a focus on the Fire Brigades Union, the National Union of Teachers, and the NHS). My recent research has looked at the role of interpersonal social networks in social movements, particularly the role that these networks play in participation in covert and militant forms of activism. Related to this research interest was a project I conducted on the suffragettes, which used suffragette letters and diaries to map the activist-related networks of leaders like Emmeline Pankhurst, and local women like Bath's Mary Blathwayt and Nottingham's Helen Watts. In this project in particular, I developed a mixed-method approach to social network analysis that integrates narrative materials with formal SNA, and explores personal networks as 'socio-cultural lifeworlds'. My current research interests include non-organised (sometimes individual) forms of protest ('misbehaviour'), and co-housing (whether ideologically driven communes, or shared living arising out of economic necessity). I write about misbehaviour in my forthcoming book Social Movements and Protest (Cambridge), while I am currently co-investigator on the ESRC-funded project 'Under One Roof' (with Professor Sue Heath and Dr Katherine Davies), which explores co-housing in different contexts, and will involve mapping the personal social networks which arise out of shared living.