Having grown up in Northern Ireland and South Africa, I have a particular interest in the social psychology of intergroup contact, conflict, desegregation, and re-segregation in historically divided societies. I am also a firm believer in the idea that methods and concepts must be adequate to the complexity of psychological processes as they unfold in everyday life contexts. This has led me to explore a variety of methodological and conceptual frameworks, including frameworks ‘borrowed’ from other disciplines such as linguistics, geography and sociology. It has also led me to avoid the (for me fruitless) polarization of ‘quantitative’ versus ‘qualitative’ research in social psychology. I joined our department in June of 2011, having previously lectured at Lancaster University and the Universities of Worcester and Cape Town. Since 2009, I have also acted as Editor (with Jolanda Jetten) of the British Journal of Social Psychology.