Professional Activities

Member of CILIP and ISKO

Joint Editor of Journal of Information Science

My current teaching and research interests are in the areas of image analysis, multimedia information retrieval and indexing, social tagging, and critical communication and information studies, particularly subject analysis, interpretation and semiotics; representations of knowledge, and classification theory; structuralist and semiotic approaches to modelling culture as "human sciences". I am also interested in critical theory approaches to popular culture.

I joined the Department in January 2007. Before that I taught in the Department of Information Science, City University, London, and in the School of Information Studies and Department of Media and Communication at the University of Central England, Birmingham. My first teaching post was in the University of Northumbria. Before moving into teaching I worked in information research and media librarianship.

I read H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Roland Barthes, and golden age detective fiction. I listen to Steely Dan, The Blue Nile, Capercaillie and anyone singing Cole Porter, and I love the night train from London to Scotland, particularly when I end up in Kilchattan Bay.