Thoughts and Ideas
This section is a space for me to consider issues within society and contemporary culture.
Here, I’ll introduce and further develop ideas I like to work with, explain and expand on issues that stem from previous projects, as well as consider immersive research and developing practices.
Study a PhD with Dr. Christopher R. Matthews
I specialise in conducting and supervising immersive research, but I’m keen to discuss various projects and research methods with prospective students as well.
Immersion in action research with Dr. Cathy van Ingen
I’ve relied on Cathy’s work in my teaching and publications so, I wanted to explore two main issues with her. Firstly, how Cathy maintains the scientific basis of her work while acknowledging that it has an ideological basis. And secondly, to discuss some of the challenging stories that come from doing 13+ years of conducting research with people who have suffered some form of trauma.
We need to talk about the worst bits of the ‘best fights’
“What a fight for the fans here in Houston… An absolute classic… The stock of both women goes up with that performance tonight”. That was UFC commentator Jon Anik’s description of the fight between Angela Hill and Jessica Andrade at the recent UFC fight night 104.
It was great to watch these two perform in such a powerful and skilful manner, creating what Jack Slack has called the best strawweight bout to date. And to top it all off with great shows of respect and appreciation for one another at the end of the fight was excellent.
Love Fighting Hate Violence: Engaging people in academic projects with emotion
Emotional language is often avoided in academic research, writing or teaching. In conforming to this academic norm, scholars hope to demonstrate that their research is isolated from personal attachments and the biases these might involve.
While this can be considered an important element of the scientific method, it does not capture the realities of human life more broadly. In this article I discuss this in relation to an anti-violence project that a colleague and I co-founded.
Why do people explain learned behaviours using ideas connected to sex hormones?
This article is based on some extracts from one of my first academic papers. It uses key academic ideas to explain why people rely on often overly simplistic ideas about sex hormones as explanations for socially learned behaviours.
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