I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin.
I am a sociologist of everyday life. I study how we can spend more of our time living. My research interests focus on social demography, sociotemporal disparities in well-being, and eco-social determinants of health.
My work has been funded by Enterprise Ireland, UKRI's Economic and Social Research Council, UK Academy of Medical Sciences, National Science Foundation, United States Agency for International Development, UC Berkeley's Canadian Studies Program, UC Berkeley's Social Sciences Data Laboratory, and by the Soros Fellowship for New Americans.
I have collaborated with the Colchester City Council, the Barcelona Time Use Initiative for a Healthy Society, Eurofound, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, and the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative. Public media outlets featuring my research include The Conversation, RTÉ, World Economic Forum, Daily Maverick, Zoomer, Magdalene, Over Sixty, InnerSelf, and Phys.org.
I received joint PhDs in Sociology and Demography from the University of California, Berkeley. I earned a BA in Sociology from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
When not pondering the minutia of time, I love traveling (preferably by motorcycle, boat, or train), photography (especially ephemeral street art), painting (mainly acrylic), studying internal martial arts (perpetual beginner in chen style tai chi, bagua, hsing-i), binge watching time travel movies (I know... just when you were starting to like me... well, no one's perfect) and playing my handpan and didgeridoos.
Recent Publications
The Social Anatomy of Pain: Friendship Loss, Sociotemporal Disparities, and Persistent Physical Pain
2025
While research demonstrates that social network characteristics influence the experience of persistent physical pain, existing studies primarily focus on psychological aspects and are often confined to laboratory settings. This leaves critical gaps in understanding how these dynamics unfold in real-world contexts. One such gap involves the role of discretionary time availability, a key determinant of wellbeing. This is particularly important because friendship loss has temporal dimensions, as individuals must reallocate the time once shared with friends. Using data from the Canadian Time for Health Survey, this study adopts a three-stage analytical approach. First, bivariate analyses explore the distribution of self-reported pain by socioeconomic status (SES) and friendship loss. Next, binary logistic regressions examine the relationship between friendship loss and self-reported pain, accounting for time availability and relevant sociodemographic control variables. Finally, propensity score weighting and robustness tests evaluate whether otherwise similar individuals — differing only in their experience of friendship loss — report distinct levels of persistent physical pain. This research illustrates that: (i) friendship loss is a significant predictor of persistent physical pain; (ii) respondent sociodemographic characteristics shape the experience; (iii) both time excess and time poverty increase the expected risk of pain, suggesting the presence of Temporal Goldilocks Zones. In short, physical pain is concurrently a sociotemporal phenomenon, transcending individual characteristics.