I am a professor in the School of Education at the University of Aberdeen and Director of the Centre for Global Development. I am also a member of the Centre for Civil Society, the Rule of Law, and the New Europe Centre.

My main research interests are gender, wellbeing, quality of life and social quality, and social, economic and political transformations. I have researched the UK, the European Union, the former Soviet Union, East Africa, the Middle East, and North Africa.

I am an author (with Claire Wallace and Melissa Taylor) of the best-selling text An Introduction to Sociology: Feminist Perspectives (3rd edition 2005), Routledge.

My most recent books are Democratisation Against Democracy: How the EU Fails the Middle East (with Andrea Teti, Valeria Talbot and Paolo Maggiolini), Palgrave Macmillan, January 2020, and (with Andrea Teti and Francesco Cavatorta) The Arab Uprisings in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia: Social, Economic and Political Transformations in the Arab World, Palgrave Macmillan, January 2018. I have published more than 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

My work has been published in English, French, Italian, Swedish, Farsi, Polish, Korean and Chinese.

I directed the recently completed project ‘The Fostering a Social Practice Approach to Adult Literacies for Improving People’s Quality of Life in Western Rwanda’ funded under the Scottish Government's Scotland Rwanda Programme (£1.6m, 2017–24).

I am currently directing the NIHR Global Health Research Group on Promoting Children's and Adolescents' Mental Wellbeing in sub-Saharan Africa (£2.8m, 2022–2026).