I am a historian of twentieth century Britain and Ireland, but with a particular interest in the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’. I joined MMU in August 2018 after holding a variety of research and teaching posts at Queen’s University Belfast, University College Dublin, King’s College London and the University of Chichester.

My first book, No Solution: the Labour government and the Northern Ireland conflict 1974-79 (Manchester University Press, 2016), analysed constitutional, security and economic policies and debates between civil servants, senior military officers, policemen and politicians in Great Britain and both parts of Ireland. It explained why acceptable political institutions could not be firmly established in the first decade of the conflict.

As a Research Fellow on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project ‘The Politics of Consumer Credit in the United Kingdom, 1938-92’, I explored how the UK came to have the most diverse consumer credit market in Europe with Professor Sean O’Connell and Dr Paul Corthorn (QUB). A co-authored book with the same title as the project was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. It depicts how the philosophies of major political parties contributed to the economic and social impact of the growing use of credit in British society.

My current project is titled ‘The use of other conflicts in in Northern Ireland’s “Troubles”: a history of political culture’. It received external grant support from the Irish Research Council and the British Academy/Leverhulme, and has resulted in articles on colonial resonances and the appropriation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Northern Irish political discourse. I am currently preparing a monograph covering these topics and extending the analysis to the use of the Irish past, Cold War connections, and expressions of solidarity with South Africa and the Basque country.