My main research interests are in gender, the family, and migration, particularly in the field of cross-border marriages. My current project 'UK-EU Couples after Brexit: Migrantisation and the UK family immigration regime' (brexitcouples.ac.uk) explores the experiences of the first cohort of UK-EU couples to be subject to the UK's family immigration system - an often overlooked consequence of Brexit.  This follows-on from a previous project 'Kept Apart' on the routine separation of families and couples in the UK family immigration regime.

My most recent book, Marriage Migration and Integration, based on an ESRC funded project of the same name, was published by Palgrave in 2020. The book takes a critical look at common assumptions in political discourse about the impacts of South Asian marriage migration on processes of integration. That work also led to the development, with Sarah Spencer, of a distinctive model of the complex and contested concept of integration, for use in research and by policy makers. 

I first developed an interest in transnational relationships in my earlier ethnographic work on British Pakistani transnational marriages, published in a number of articles and the book 'Transnational Pakistani Connections: Marrying "Back Home"'. This work explores the gendered emotional landscape of risk, connection and distance in transnational kinship.  Through this work I also developed an interest in migrant masculinities, an edited collection on  Transnational Marriage: New perspectives from Europe and Beyond and a research network on Marriage and Migration. 

Before joining the University of Bristol in 2009, I was a lecturer at the University of Oxford (ISCA and COMPAS) where I convened the Migration Studies MPhil. Prior to that, I worked at the Unversity of Edinburgh, from where I also received my PhD in 2003.

I teach on issues of gender, family and migration, and currently supervise a range of PhD students -  I welcome applications from new students in any of my research interests.