I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). My current teaching is around policy development. I have broader teaching interests is residential child care, ethics and social work theory and a particular interest in professional education.

I was a practitioner and manager in residential child care settings for almost 20 years before entering academia. My first academic post was at the University of Strathclyde, where I set up and taught a Masters programme in residential child care. In 2005, I moved to the University of Edinburgh as lecturer, and subsequently, senior lecturer, in social work. I served as head of social work there from 2013 - 2017. I joined the University of Dundee as Professor of Social Work in 2017. My wife and I are respite and foster carers, which maintains a link with direct care practice.

I have a broad range of research and writing interests. I have published three books on residential child care, one of which is translated into Japanese, and two edited volumes on moral panics and on social work in a changing Scotland. I am writing a further book on the stories of boys (now men) who were brought up in a residential school in the 1980s. I regularly publish articles in high ranking journals. My writing and research interests lie in the areas of care and upbringing, social pedagogy, social work ethics and theorising social work. I have a particular current interest in historical abuse in residential child care.

I would be interested in supervising PhDs in any of the above areas, or more broadly, through negotiation.