His work uses arts-based methods in an original form of community focussed co-research practice – called “working with social haunting” – that aims at re-imagining the futures of de-industrialised communities. He has recently led two UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded projects around that topic. His particular interest is the ethnographic study of the intersection of class, place and gender as it impacts on the education of working class young people in former coalmining communities. He is a Network Convenor for the ethnography network at the European Education Research Association (EERA) and a peer reviewer for the ECER conference.