I am a medical sogiologist interested in ageing. My research explores health, care and sexuality in old age and at the end of life. I am interested in how systemic power relations influence intimate relationships and institutional processes. My ongoing projects include an OSC-funded study of intimacy and sexuality in age 65+ and a UKRI-funded study of grave reuse, informing the Law Commission's epoch-making review of burial legislation. My previous projects include a study of loneliness and close relationships in retirement communities and a knowledge exchange programme on palliative care provision in care homes with managers, nurses, general practitioners (GPs), and care workers.

I have recently won the prestigious British Science Award Lecture for the Social Sciences for my research on dying in care homes. My doctoral thesis is the first study of palliative care practice in British care homes in almost 20 years. It combines ethnographic, interview and quantitative methods with feminist social reproduction theory to shed new light on the management of residents’ dying.  Dying with dementia in care homes is not a natural process, but a highly managed one. Care home staff and GPs have a legal duty to prolong residents’ lifespan. This emphasis continues right into the end of life. To comply with legislation, care home staff collaborate with GPs to extend residents’ dying trajectories and naturalise specific forms of dying. This raises questions about what sorts of deaths are being supported in care homes.

My public engagement work includes the 2022 University of Bath Memorial Lecture on non-intervention in care homes as well as an interactive source and a BBC Ideas video on sexuality in old age. I worked with BBC Ideas to produce an educational video on Viagra. I considered how to use voice over and imagery to convey nuanced knowledge on sexual health issues to a large and young public audience, in an entertaining way. I also gained experience of balancing stakeholder and academic priorities in the production process. My academic publications can be found in Social Science and Medicine, BMC Geriatrics and the collection Deleuze and Guattari and Fascism edited by Rick Dolphijn and Rosi Braidotti.

I am open to supervise doctoral students on the following topics:

• Palliative Care, End of Life Care and Dying
• Non-intervention at the end of life
• Lasting powers of attorney (LPAs)
• Families and kin relationships at the end of life
• Care work and care institutions/organisations
• Technology for health and social care provision at home (for example: virtual wards, remote monitoring)
• Intimacy and sexuality in old age and at the end of life
• Digital technology mediating intimacy and sexuality in old age (for example: social media, dating applications, pornography)

Research areas: old age, palliative care, end of life care (EOLC), care homes, dementia, sexuality, intimate relationships, gender, care work, social care policy, social reproduction, Marxist-feminist social reproduction theory (SRT), biopolitics.