Really grateful for Mwenza from @foodandsolidarity.bsky.social repping the north-east and speaking out so clearly about the grim picture of #ukpoverty2026 as a continued political choice, and highlighting the urgent need for collective care and action on issues such as rent control.

This year we are practicing celebrating more. Because why not? So tonight that looks like going all-in on tenuously-remaining-contestant-themed snacks for the @thetraitors.bsky.social finale!

Thanks so much to the @britsoci.bsky.social for funding our regional postgraduate event today in Newcastle! So many fascinating presentations already. Looking forward to a screening of a local film about community, resilience and hope this afternoon!

PGRs interested in ‘social transformation’ - come and join us and share your work at a free, friendly day conference in Newcastle on the 17th July! CfP open until this Friday. PGR presentations and then a showing/discussion of a wonderful film, ‘100 People’ with the filmmaker. Please share!

Still buzzing after a brilliant away day with the Centre for Peace and Security at Coventry Uni last week. It's just absolutely full of committed, thoughtful, passionate researchers who are using research to make the world a better place and it's a privilege to get to study there.

One of the things I notice coming from a biomedical/public health background into the social sciences is just how much language is absolutely foreign to me. Every day in articles (+my emails!) are words I don't understand. It's exciting but also part of me wants to push back. Why so much fanciness?

#TraitorsUk #TheTraitors I really want someone to tell Alexander “Look at where you are Look at where you started The fact that you're alive is a miracle” #Hamilton

This is my very favourite subtitle mistake of all time.

The peace of the sea is always a gift to me.

Yesterday I learned that in 2004, a group of Welsh sheep were quarantined because they were a threat to millions of £s worth of national infrastructure What did they do that was such a threat? They learned to cross cattle grids. By tucking in their legs and rolling. I can’t stop thinking about it

I'm sure this was coincidence, but I want to believe that having a mammy researching faith responses to hardship (including food insecurity) fed into this response. That said, my older kid keeps me humble by regularly telling me I should be doing something that actually changes the world, so...

Really loved that my 7-year-old was practising good and healthy disagreement in school this week - building confidence in listening respectfully and saying 'I agree because...' and 'I disagree because...' Primary schools so often feel to me (from the outside) like positive little micro-societies.

Aging is so underrated. Your peers are more interesting, and conversations richer. You're able to revisit books you first read twenty years ago. There is less jealousy, and God willing less pride. It's just a great time of life, aside from the thing that contains you (or is you) falling apart.

Motivational Christmas nails and fairy lights to help with the sniffly writing efforts this week. Will it be enough? We’ll see!

I had a conversation this morning that reminded me that it is okay to find things that are objectively hard, hard. I find it extremely easy to remind other people of this, and extremely difficult to remind myself of this. I'm thankful for external perspective.

*Call for researchers, teachers and practitioners in religious groups - share widely* Save the date: SocRel Response Day 2025! This years SocRel Chair's Response day will be held at King's College London on the 29th March 2025, 10am - 5pm. The theme will be Religion, Disability and Neurodiversity.

I’m really keen to do some learning about external organisations doing arts projects in traditionally working-class communities. I have some internal bias about how *sometimes* that sort of work feels like it comes with top-down, imposed, middle class assumptions. I want to interrogate that… 1/2

Just discovered by chance that John McKnight passed away last month. His work and thinking on ABCD, all about the strengths of communities and how we might spot, connect up and strengthen those assets, has been so important to me in making sense of my community experiences. I'm grateful for him.

Just a reminder: All vaccines used in public health have been rigorously tested. Their benefits greatly outweigh their risks. While a few people have a medical reason for not taking vaccines, most people (and the population overall) will benefit. Doctors who claim otherwise are irresponsible.

Wealth inequality = health inequality. Where all but the very richest lose out. The underlying mechanisms are complex and varied, but that’s the headline, as far as I understand it. We know what we need to do to fix this - but is the political will there?

My new favourite tradition is hiding some money with the decorations when you put them away, so you can treat yourself to fancy shmancy nibbles and a drink in the skint Christmas lead-up as a reward for managing to get the Christmas tree up.

When I was interviewed for my current youth work role in the Church of England I was asked “what do you think is the biggest challenge the CofE faces re children’s and youth work?” I answered that a church that is scared of decline and so pursues growth at all costs will likely crush or harm 1/2

Had the best discussions today with my little groups of @brilliantclub.bsky.social Year 10 students about critical thinking… misinformation… trust… objectivity and subjectivity… reliability of sources and more. They are just so smart, thoughtful and funny and it’s a joy to work with them.

Whamageddoned on December 4th. In an ASDA cafe, of course. One of my most irrationally strongly held opinions is that ASDA cafes are always Disappointing. Today is another data point for the graph. And yet I am drawn back to them time and time again, like a moth to a flame.

I was so sure I wasn’t going to decorate for Christmas this weekend, then someone sent us a tiny tree in the post and things escalated and I’m not mad about it (though it’s possible that Biscuit is, just a little)

Had the most lovely time yesterday gathering people to make rag wreaths. Doing a proper wreath workshop (as lush as they are) is always out my budget, so I tentatively asked on the local FB page if anyone wanted to make the cloth versions with me. Nearly 40 people came along and it was pure joy.

This is a really lovely story. Flooring is so expensive, and I've been in so many houses where people just don't have the resources to spend on it - yet it makes such a difference to your quality of life. I've long wondered why social housing providers so often strip out floors between tenants.

Home working is today sponsored by a tiny ghost. Too poorly for nursery, but not too poorly to spook.

My other half has instigated a new household tradition called ‘Payday poptarts’. I have zero objections.

It’s so fascinating that we can have the feeling that there’s something wrong with an argument - especially in philosophy - without being able to say exactly why and (for me at least) it can takes days, weeks, months, to formulate the problem in a satisfactory way.

Digging into the academic literature on how spirituality might fuel activism and social justice - not through replicating colonial, oppressive power structures, but by sparking prophetic imagination and building solidarity across alterity, is bringing me lots of life and hope at the moment.

Hunger is a violation of basic human rights – we should be outraged by UK's food bank crisis. Work doesn't pay. 38% of universal credit claimants are at work. 1% has more wealth than 70% of the population combined. Must redistribute income/wealth. Tax the rich. www.bigissue.com/opinion/food...

So much of my life is spent in public libraries/community hubs attached to public libraries, and honestly every time I am sat in one, I'm grateful for what a precious community resource they are. In a world of market forces and individualism, libraries feel like a little slice of resistance.

I’d really like to change the language of every Christmas appeal for toys/food/other support for families from ‘disadvantaged’, ‘underprivileged’, or (possibly the worst) ‘needy’ to something more accurate. ‘People failed by structural injustice/inequality/the greed of others’? What’d be better?

Super excited that the ethics application for my PhD fieldwork has been approved - happy news on a November Monday morning! Cannot WAIT to get out and about spending time with people, learning from and with them and from their deep, grassroots community wisdom.

This cardigan is called Teams. Every square is a meeting that could have been an email. It’s actually Teams Mk II as its predecessor had a bad experience with the washing machine. #knitting 🧶

Gosh, this is stark but really mirrors much of my lived experience within a north-east community scarred by structural injustice. I am passionate about strengths-based approaches in communities. But sometimes those drops of hope simply aren't enough to counteract the tidal wave of structural sh*t.

My rescue cheese plant’s posture gives me such strong Randall Boggs vibes and I now can’t unsee it.

I’ve found myself back thinking about shame a lot this week, and chewing over how systems and institutions become unhealthy places when they have no tools for recognising and transforming shame… and I’m wondering about how often in church settings, damaging theology feeds and compounds that problem.

I went to see a lush film the other day about an inner-city community in Newcastle - it was a really moving portrait of how the lives of very different people intersect in beautiful and messy ways, and how they're building solidarity across that difference. It was really moving - and hope-bringing.

My PhD research explores, primarily from the perspectives of people experiencing themselves experiencing hardship, how faith groups (other than Christians) are responding to hardship and inequality in the north-east of England. Would love to connect with anyone researching similar topics!

Making the move from X. Hoping to share ideas about developing a theology of liberation in breadline Britain.

📰 Today we gathered with @jrf-uk.bsky.social and @trusselluk.bsky.social at Parliament Square to deliver The Hardship Times to parliament. Too many people make heartbreaking choices between the essentials like heating and eating every day. 📢 The UK government must take urgent action on hardship.

Amongst all that is messy and chaotic and tragic in the world… snowfall on the beach is just the purest of joys.

I post about politics, climate, feminism, but also poetry and beauty because we have to remember what we're for, as well as what we're against.

‘The qualities that matter in…changing the world are mostly not physical courage and violent clashes, but the ability to coordinate and inspire and connect with lots of other people and create stories about what could be and how we get there.’ I’ve fallen down a Rebecca Solnit rabbit hole tonight 🤩

Somehow, tentatively asking locally if anyone might want to make rag wreaths together has evolved into 40 people coming along to make them with me in a local tearoom next Thursday… I’m both daunted and excited! (and I have a lot of fabric scraps to chop up before then…)

Yes, this. I reckon I have a thousand stories from a decade living in a community with one of the worst healthy life expectancies in the country that illustrate this at a grassroots level (let alone all the research we have illustrating this over decades).

The therapeutic benefits of 10 minutes with the sea, sky and Bon Iver cannot be overstated.