My primary research focus is in adult learning and teaching and higher education. I generally draw heavily on my past research in history, history of religion, anthropology and literature and I'm interested primarily in communities (values and functioning, and how these are not as distinct as is often assumed). This puts me at the qualitative end of the spectrum with a persistent preference for ethnographic and narrative-based approaches. Where I tend to look for insight is in the interaction of people with institutional culture, operations and strategy.

In recent years, this is coalesced into an interest in interdisciplinarity and threshold concepts, and I am currently developing ideas implied in the Cultural Theory (misleadingly called 'Cultural Theory of Risk' by Wikipedia), as originally developed by the anthropologist Mary Douglas.

In practice then, I am particularly interested in teaching 'cultures', by which I mean the overall effect of curriculum design, and how teaching and institutions can embody, cultivate and silently enforce different values and practices.