I am a professor in the School of Education at the University of Aberdeen and Director of the Centre for Global Development. I am also a member of the Centre for Civil Society and the Rule of Law and the New Europe Centre.

My main reseach interests are in gender, quality of life and social quality, and social, economic and political transfromations. I have carried out reseach in the UK, the European Union, the former Soviet Union, East Africa and the Middle East and North Africa. I am author (with Claire Wallace and Melissa Taylor) of the best selling text An Introduction to Sociology: Femminist Perspectives (3rd editon 2005). Routledge. My most recent book (with Andrea Teti and Francesco Cavatorta) The Arab Uprisings in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia: Social, Economic and Political Transfromations in the Arab World. Palgrave Macmillian,  was published in January 2018.  My work has been published in English, French, Swedish, Polish, Korean and Chinese. 

I am currently writting up for publication, with Andrea Teti,  the findings from the Arab Transformations Project funded under the EU's Framework Programme 7 (€2.49m, SSH-2012, grant number 320214, 2012-16). I am directing the Fostering a Social Practice Approach to Adult Literacies for Improving People’s Quality of Life in Western Rwanda project funded under the Scottish Government's Scotland Rwanda Programme  (£1.2m, 2017-22). With Lucia D'Ambruoso I am working on a project Fostering Support for Child And Family Wellbeing - Learning from International Experience, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  I am also  working on an ESRC funded project with Professor  Claire Wallace on Growing up and Growing Older in  Aberdeen and a University of Aberdeen funded project with Professor George Youngson The Social Impact of a Specialist Paediatric Surgical Service in Rwanda : A Qualitative Evaluation of the Effects on Child, Family and Community.