I am a Lecturer in Sociology at Southampton Solent University. My research interests include vegan studies, sustainable practices, culture, and religion. In my PhD, which I completed at the University of Southampton and which was funded by the South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership, I explored the experiences of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim vegans in the UK. I was particularly interested in exploring the ways in which the religious vegan experience is distinct, as well as the motivations driving religious individuals to embrace veganism. I explored various themes such as everyday experience, food practices, and understandings of both Abrahamic and vegan beliefs, practices, and values. I had an interdisciplinary supervisory team and drew on theory from sociology, anthropology, and geography in my research. I hope my findings will help to improve vegan advocacy efforts, so we can have more meaningful conversations with religious communities.
I am a qualitative researcher and in my PhD, I used a range of research methods, including semi-structured interviews, social media-based diary methods, and virtual participant observation. In my MSc (Social Research Methods), my dissertation explored the perceptions of veganism within the Muslim community of Britain, and for this I employed a mixed methods approach, utilising semi-structured interviews and a survey.
