Biography

My journey into academia began at Winchester University in 2005 where I studied for three years for a degree in psychology. After graduating in 2008, I was officially hooked and began studying for an MSc in occupational and organizational psychology here at Surrey. I felt that being part of the university scene really enabled me to interact with other like minded people and develop my keen interest in the philosophy, and day-to-day politics of society generally, and work and organizational life specifically. It may come as no surprise to learn then that at heart I consider myself to be more the aspiring philosopher than pragmatic social scientist. This is apparent in that much of my research efforts have been inspired by postmodernist/poststructuralist theorizing pertaining to critical issues such as power, knowledge, and representation. At present I am pursuing a PhD under the supervision of Dr. Adrian Coyle and Dr. Lynne Millward.

As a married father of three children my interests outside of psychology and research include an eclectic mix of reading children’s stories at bedtime, listening intently to flute practice, helping with homework, fun days out, being a personal chauffeur to little people who have a busier social life than I do, watching the entire back catalogue of Disney films on those cold rainy days where nothing else will do (and yes I have had to endure the pain of the High School Musical trilogy and dare I say Hannah Montana), and pretending to be a child eating dinosaur – grrrrrrrrrr. Oh, and recovering from all of the above.

Research Interests

My primary research interests are focussed on issues of power, knowledge, and discourse within an organizational context. This broad array of research concerns is based upon several critical perspectives that attend to the politics of work and organizational life. Much of my work is founded upon the premise that the study of psychology has become increasingly synonymous with the study of language. Consequently, I am also keen to expand upon, and promote the value of qualitative methodological techniques (particularly discourse analysis) in the exploration of a range of research topics within the field of organizational and occupational psychology.

Broadly defined, the research that I am undertaking at present constitutes a three part qualitative analysis that seeks to further explicate (and ultimately critique) the application of psychological theory and methods within the economic domain. My first study utilises the poststructuralist view of power as a contextualisation for a historical analysis of multi-source feedback methods within organizations.

Teaching

As part of the tutorial team I aid the development of core academic skills such as essay writing, APA style referencing, and critical evaluations. I am also responsible for marking subject based assignments and providing the students with constructive written and face-to-face feedback.

Departmental Duties

I work closely with several other PhD students as part of the undergraduate tutorial programme.