Biography

Between 9.30am and 4.30pm, I am a lecturer in the School of Sport, Rehabilitation, and Exercise Sciences at the University of Essex. Outside of work, I run an education focused not-for-profit. I’m also married and have two boys under 5, which keep me pretty busy. On the rare occasion I get an afternoon to myself, I love watching football and in a previous life worked as an academy and community coach. I also enjoy getting lost watching random videos on YouTube and spend more time on Twitter than I think is healthy.

At work, I am the Director of Team Researcher Lab which currently houses 15 students (inc. ten postgrads). I also head up the Developing Young People through Sport Research Group, founded SportRχiv, and more recently (the Society for Transparency, Openness, and Replication in Kinesiology (STORK)). I enjoy creating tools, solving problems, and bringing people together around a vision or project. I know this sounds corny but it’s true.

As a researcher, my training lies at the intersection between Social and Developmental Psychology and my research examines ways we can use sport and team environments to positively affect the development of young people. I am particularly interested in the development of intrapersonal and interpersonal skills and mechanisms. This includes research on values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, and the psychosocial mechanisms that combine to regulate behaviour. I’m also interested in better understanding the thoughts and actions of those tasked with supporting the development of such skills (e.g., leaders, mentors, coaches, and teachers). My published research – which is all available to download here – generally falls within these topics but I’m a curious person and occasionally you’ll find something left field that I was just interested in.

If you have a project you think I might be interested in too, please drop me a message and we can have a chat.