The Leverhulme Trust funded Changing Families, Changing Food programme was an inter-disciplinary research programme, funded by a Programme Grant from the Leverhulme Trust. The Programme began in October 2005 and ran for just over three years.

It was organised into three research strands on: pregnancy and motherhood (led by Paula Nicolson, RHUL); childhood and family life (Allison James, Sheffield); and family and community (Graham Smith, RHUL). Focusing mainly on contemporary Britain, the Programme also included two international comparisons and a `time-line' to establish the quantitative and qualitative nature of social changes affecting families and food over the last century.

The Programme was coordinated by Peter Jackson involving colleagues from Clinical Sciences, East Asian Studies, Geography, Nursing and Midwifery, ScHARR and Sociological Studies at Sheffield in collaboration with colleagues in Health and Social Care at Royal Holloway, University of London.

The research took food as the lens through which recent changes in family life could be viewed. This included examining how changes in family form affected patterns of food consumption. The Programme's findings have contributed to current debates about obesity and nutrition, media and consumption, food choice and deprivation. Publications included Changing Families, Changing Food.

I have worked on a number of oral history projects, including as a Wellcome funded Research Fellow at Glasgow where I was responsible for An oral history of general practice in Paisley: locality and the diffusion of medical knowledge and innovation. The study investigated the recent history of general practice in a single locality, including the impact of change on the lives of general practitioners (GPs), their careers, their professional contacts, and their relationships with the communities they serve. Thirty full life history interviews were conducted with both retired and practising GPs. The project's findings were initially reported in a series of articles in the British Journal of General Practice (June 2002 to May 2003).

I completed my first degree in History at the University of Stirling in 1981 and then a postgraduate degree in Sociology at the University of Essex. While at Essex I undertook an oral history of booth boxing in Scotland. This research led to a radio programme and a television programme (see Billy Kay's Odyssey productions).

In the mid-1980s I established two community oral history projects in Dundee and Arbroath. I was then was appointed as a senior research officer at Essex where I worked on Families, Social Mobility and Ageing, an Intergenerational Approach (100 Families).

After leaving Essex I was employed as a community historian in Dundee and as an associate lecturer for the Open University in Scotland.

In 1996 I completed my PhD 'The making of a woman's town: household and gender in Dundee 1890 to 1940'.

I then joined the Migration and Ethnicity Research Centre at the University of Sheffield. After completing the two-year Leverhulme funded project Changing identities: Eastern Europeans in Bradford since 1945, I moved to the Department of General Practice at Glasgow.

As well as completing an oral history of general practice in Paisley, I was also the main researcher on a pilot project studying health professionals' perceptions of inequalities. Interviews were carried out with nurses, managers and general practitioners in practices serving deprived populations in Glasgow's east end (see Reversing the inverse care law: understanding the needs of primary care in deprived areas).

Past Research Administraion

As well as co-coordinatingChanging Families, Changing Food I was also responsible for coordinating the Social Science and Health's research cluster at the University of Sheffield from 2004-2007.

Other interests

I was also a regular contributor to Hoolet - the magazine for the RCGP (Scotland) and along with Liz Mitchell and Jonathon Smith introduced the world to Dokemon cards.