My research examines a number of interrelated topics concerning the nonprofit/charity sector: funding sources and networks; measuring and modelling organisational and financial risk; evaluating regulatory interventions; and estimating geographical distribution of charitable activity. I have methodological and teaching interests in the use of administrative data, quantitative methods and computational social science.

I am a visiting researcher at the Gradel Institute of Charity in New College, Oxford; and Associate Director for Advanced Methods at the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science. I serve on the advisory board of the ERC funded research project "Beyond the breadline: Charitable food provision and survival strategies of the urban poor in a comparative perspective".

I am currently a Co-Investigator on the ESRC project: Improving Access to and Use of Organisation-Level Data on the Third Sector and Civil Society. This project will create the first national database on the population of organisations forming the third sector in the UK.

I am a visiting researcher at the Gradel Institute of Charity at New College, Oxford, where I collaborate with international colleagues on a number of projects:

• Who serves first? The role of experience and connections in volunteering as a trustee for new charities
• Declines by birth cohort in volunteering as a charitable trustee: analysis of large-scale longitudinal data for England and Wales
• Charity begins and ends at home? Trends in the allocation and withdrawal of cross-border philanthropy

This work uses large-scale, regulatory data in combination with longitdudinal and machine learning analysis techniques to generate novel insights on the activities of charitable organisations.

Current PhD students:

• Olalekan Oyedepo - Charitable food aid and growing inequalities in the UK

I currently teach quantitative and qualitative research methods modules at L8 and L9 of our undergraduate programme. 

I teach introductory and advanced courses on computational social science for PhD students through the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science. I have been commissioned to deliver and develop training courses for the National Centre for Research Methods, Scottish Graduate School of Social Science, and Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data. 

I have worked on large-scale impact evaluations of government funding programmes, including the £75mn Community Cost of Living Fund, helping Government and funders understand the effectiveness of their work.