Lynne is a postdoctoral research associate with the Contextual Safeguarding team, working on the From Capacity to Context project with welfare-involved parents of adolescents and practitioners to shift the focus from parenting capacity to the contexts of parent’s lives.
Before joining the team in 2025, Lynne completed an ESRC-funded PhD, exploring everyday life with teenage boys who have displayed harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) to consider social and spatial dimensions of safety, risk and children’s rights. This challenged gaps in research and practice that neglect social, physical and relational worlds of young people and the profound influence of social and systemic contexts. Through child-sensitive and rights-respecting research design, including immersive virtual reality technology, Lynne’s thesis foregrounded stories as ‘lifescapes’ - landscapes of life - to reimagine responses to HSB which shift from fixing behaviour to flourishing futures.
Lynne has been a social worker for 25 years, qualifying with an MA (Honours) in Social Work from University of Dundee then subsequent postgraduate training in Child Protection (University of Dundee), PG Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy (University of Stirling) and an MSc with distinction in Psychoanalytic Observation and Reflective Practice (University of Strathclyde). Lynne has worked in a range of practice settings including secure and residential childcare and over 13 years as a senior practitioner with children and young people who experienced abuse and/or displayed HSB.
Lynne is particularly interested in interdisciplinary, intergenerational and rights-based approaches to prevent harm, including how systems can help or hinder safety and wellbeing. Lynne is a founding member of an international, interdisciplinary working group on child-focused cities, developed through the Swedish International Centre for Local Democracy, reflecting a commitment to building safer, more inclusive environments for children, young people, families and communities.