Recent Work
Much of his recent work has been in collaboration with Alexa Hepburn. They developed a programme of study using material collected from the UK National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children's child protection helpline. This has combined a theoretical interest in how ideas such as emotion and joint understanding are conceptualized in social psychological research with a focus on applied topics such as advice resistance and its management.
Their paper on problems and prospects in the use of qualitative interviews in psychology, published in Qualitative Research in Psychology, generated debate with Jonathan Smith, Wendy Hollway and Elliot Mischler. It has been widely cited. This stimulated a further debate in Qualitative Research with Chris Griffin and Karen Henwood.
New work is focused on studying video records of mealtime interaction in families with young children. This has looked at actions such as directives, requests and threats and has a broader concern about the contribution of interaction analysis to the study of obesity.
Continuing controversy about the status of discursive psychology with respect to both traditional social psychology and alternative styles of critical work has a generated a further debate to be published in the British Journal of Social Psychology in 2010.
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