My primary research interest is in personal belief systems or philosophies (secular or religious), their relationship to other aspects of an individual’s thought and identity and their social character – i.e. the ways and extent to which social factors inform the content of belief systems and vice versa.

 

Undergraduate research (University of Leeds, 2003) focused on the interaction between religious belief/unbelief and political views, taking historian R. H. Tawney and social scientists Beatrice and Sidney Webb as comparative cases. (The research won Leeds University’s History and Le Patourel prizes for 2003 and was short-listed for the Royal Historical Society prize for undergraduate research.)

 

MPhil research (University of Cambridge, 2006) looked at substantive definitions of forms of irreligion, such as atheism, agnosticism, non-religion, nominal religion and forms of so-called spiritualism. It used a qualitative methodology that I hope to advance in PhD research.

 

I am currently involved in research with the Distributed Working project at the University of Cambridge (and in conjunction with MIT). The project explores the organisation and experience of distance working.