Background

With influences from anthropology, biology, psychology, and philosophy, Martha’s research is inter-disciplinary. She uses psychological techniques and her anthropological training to answer questions relevant to scientists and social scientists alike. She focuses on the themes of belonging, ritual and transformative experiences, themes central to both her academic research and her consultancy practice, with clients including the Premier League, Hyundai, and Guinness. To better understand group bonding, conflict, and intergroup violence, she has worked with unusual and extreme groups across the world, from Brazilian football hooligans to fundamentalist Muslims in Indonesia and partygoers in Britain’s underground rave scene. Her research on social contact and wellbeing during the pandemic spanned 122 countries and reached over 10,000 people. Martha currently leads research with the UK’s Ministry of Justice, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and major British football clubs to investigate how football identities could be harnessed to improve behaviour in prison and reduce reoffending through the Twinning Project.

While some self-sacrificial acts are beneficial to society, e.g. charitable donations or giving blood, others have distinctly hostile implications, e.g. sectarian or gang violence. Over the last decade she has investigated football ‘tribes’ across four continents. Her doctoral thesis was the first to analyse a particularly powerful form of group bonding - identity fusion - among football fans, including Brazilian and British football fans and ‘hooligans’. Martha is now developing intervention strategies that use football and other sports as a platform to (a) increase social cohesion, (b) reduce reoffending rates in prisons, and (c) reduce violence. Her other research strands include work on women’s reproductive health in prison, psychedelic-assisted therapies, and threat perception in social mammals.