My scholarly interests are framed through my career long engagement with feminist anti-racist decolonial critique of power. Beginning my career at the University of Birmingham UK, and having been taught in the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies had a profound influence on my personal and intellectual development from my introduction into the academy. Since that point my work has been underpinned by an understanding of the state as a global colonial capitalist cultural formation in which the idea of race functions ideologically and intersectionally to resolve moments of national crisis. My subsequent analysis covers all aspects of welfare politics and governance, state practices, identities and the broader material-cultural-affective politics through which the state is enacted nationally through global colonial formation. I capture this process through the idea of 'relational politics'. 

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I hold a PhD in Social Policy, MA Social Research and BSocSc Social Policy, all from the University of Birmingham. I also hold Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy for my longstanding contribution to the pedagogic leadership of Doctoral Education in Universities. I have taught nationally and internationally holding academic posts in a range of arts, humanities and social sciences academic contexts. Nationally at the Universities of Birmingham, Lancaster, Leeds, Leeds Beckett University, and internationally at the Universities of Sydney Australia, Mannheim Germany, Cape Town, Rhodes, Johannesburg South Africa. I have published books, articles and chapters across the fields of arts, cultural studies, education, policy, politics and sociology.​

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My work has been funded through various fellowships and grants from the UK Economic and Social Research Council, Research Council’s UK, The British Academy, The UK Social Policy Association, The Feminist Review Trust, The World Universities Network, The Economic and Social History Society, the National Research Foundation of South Africa. Paid consultancies include for the BBC and Lloyds Banking Commercial. Pro bono governance and trustee work includes for Rape Crisis England and Wales and Compass Live Arts. 

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As an editor my main contributions are in the development of critical intersectional feminist decolonial analysis of social policy making, welfare governance and institutions, including 16 years service on the editorial collective of the top global tier journals Critical Social Policy (including 7 years in the lead role as article editor), also serving full terms on the Editorial Boards of Policy and Politics and Sociology. 

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From the 2010s growing recognition of my work into global colonial whiteness and state power led to a range of international collaborations including ongoing collaborations across South Africa. My six year visiting appointment at the centre for Visual Identities in Arts and Design in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Johannesburg enriched my developing creative orientations through participation in various curations and related public work. My own creative outputs include collaborative arts and film installations that have been exhibited internationally in the USA, Mexico and South Africa and South Korea. 

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My public speaking and media invitations come from high profile UK national organisations as varied as Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, Pushkin House, the Royal Society for the Arts, West Yorkshire Playhouse, to professional associations like The Guild of Psychotherapists and the BAMEed Network as well as internationally located policy organisations like the Gauteng City-Region Observatory in Johannesburg South Africa to regional arts organisations like the Blue Coat Centre in Liverpool, and local community groups like the Network of Women and Men up North in Sheffield. My research has been reported on in international news media as widely across as widely as France, Switzerland, the United States, South Africa and Pakistan.

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