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I graduated from University of Central Lancashire (Preston Poly) in 1993 with a traditional psychology degree. Then I completed three years PhD research at Nene College (Leicester University) with Dr Eunice Fisher. I videoed interaction in university tutorials, and conducted conversation analyses of topic production, topic management, academic identity, and the relevance of gender. I developed these and other interests whilst working at the Institute of Behavioural Sciences (University of Derby, 1997-2000) and University College Worcester (2000-2002). I joined the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough in October 2002 and was promoted to Reader (2007) and Chair (2009). I teach on the BSc Social Psychology programme, covering modules in relationships, qualitative methods and forensic psychology.

I research and write on discourse, conversation and social interaction, where my main focus has been on the relations between psychological topics and everyday talk, or ‘discursive psychology’. This involves examining the ways in which common sense ideas about psychological states (thoughts, plans, emotions, attitudes, personality, and so on), figure as part of the conceptual resources that people use in accounting for their everyday lives. I also look at the ways in which psychological business of any kind is handled or managed in talk, not necessarily by overtly naming mental states. This general concern with common sense psychological discourse is also the basis of a critical interest in the nature and products of psychology as a scientific discipline. My main resource for examining how talk works, increasingly over the last decade, is conversation analysis. Among the topics I have looked at are: early child language; conversational remembering; ‘script’ talk; classroom education and learning; conversational narratives; causal accounts and attributions; emotion talk; the deployment of identity categories; factual reporting in the news media; various aspects of relationship counselling; the conversational management of speakers’ subjectivity; complaints; irony; and various recent studies of police interrogations, neighbour disputes and mediation. The latter developments are part of an ESRC-funded joint research project with Liz Stokoe. Much of the other work has also been done jointly with various members of DARG, particularly the development of discursive psychology with Jonathan Potter.