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Research area(s)

• Social support
• Allomothering 
• Reproductive scheduling and decision making 
• Fertility
• Maternal and child health
• Infant feeding 
• Maternal mental health
• Early child development
• Subsistence and livelihood transitions 

Research Interests

The main focus of my research is to improve our understanding, and consequences, of social support for mothers with young children when the face high caregiving demands. I am interested in developing our understanding about how social support works (i.e., its mechanisms) by exploring mothers respond to different types of support (practical, emotional and informational) and how they interact with existing social norms and expectations to impact key outcomes of maternal mental health, infant feeding and early child development and health. This aim has lead me with colleagues (, and ) to developed a mobile application to collect daily data on women’s infant feeding experiences and decisions, which aims to enhance the understanding of breastfeeding narratives and feeding behaviour​.

I’m also currently running a cross-cultural project exploring the relationship between fertility and subsistence in 27 subsistence level and transitional populations. This research focuses on individual levels of fertility and subsistence, overcoming previous limitations by moving beyond subsistence typologies.  

Project details

For more information on past and current projects please see