I am a qualitative researcher with a background in geography and science and technologies studies (STS). My broad research interests encompass relationships between art, science, technology, people and the natural world. I have a first-class B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in geography from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a D.Phil. degree from the University of Oxford (School of Geography and the Environment), where I also lectured full-time for three years before embarking on a full-time research career. 

I have been involved in numerous interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research projects, studying, among other things, digital futures, digital equity and intersectionality (Lancaster University; DigiAge project); challenges faced by art-based/ qualitative approaches in policy-co-production orchestrated by governments (Sheffield University; co-design of post-Brexit agri-environment policy); relations between science, politics, and publics in the field of plant biosecurity (ash dieback) (Nottingham University; Making Science Public program); water pollution, the formation of new participatory collectives, and the role played here by more-than-humans (Lancaster University; Loweswater Care Project); the knowledge-cultures  of farmers and power-relations around visual representations of their land and practices (Nottingham University; precision farming technologies); and changing relations to forests and trees in England in the context of colonialism, industrialization, modernisation, and discourses of sustainability and biodiversity (D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford). 

As a transdisciplinary researcher, my work often encompassed interacting with policymakers, and I have been an advisor on two UK Government Expert Panels: the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs/Natural England’s joint expert panel on the co-design of England’s post-Brexit agri-environmental policy (2018-2022), and the Environment Agency’s Science Task Group for the Bassenthwaite and Windermere Restoration Program (2008-2010). Between 2022-2023, I was invited to participate in the experimental AHRC-funded Design and Policy Research Network and I'm a member of the Ecosystems Knowledge Network. 

I have taught both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and supervised three D.Phil. students to completion. As well as teaching intermittently in the UK, I have delivered many invited lectures, workshops and seminars to students at the universities of Stockholm, Sweden (2004), Fribourg, Switzerland (2013), and the ETH Zurich, Switzerland (2020). 

I joined the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Glasgow as a Research Associate in 2025 to work on the POLART project led by Professor Sotiria Grek, which looks at interrelationships between the arts, policy, and global sustainability governance.

My research focuses on how material, biological, economic, socio-cultural, and political processes figure in human-society relations around matters of environmental concern like climate change, plant biosecurity, biodiversity loss, species extinctions, diffuse pollution, agricultural degradation and deforestation, and the role played by more-than-humans here. 

I am also interested in how interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and inclusive research practices and participatory, action-oriented approaches can contribute to the creation of more socially and environmentally just worlds. This has involved working on issues like how public participation in science and democracy can be remade from a relational, constructivist STS perspective, how challenges faced by art-based, qualitative approaches in government settings can be overcome, and how marginalized voices – including those of more-than-humans and harder-to-reach stakeholders - can be made to matter in research, policy and governance. I have pursued these research interests in the context of forestry, farming, catchment management, diffuse pollution, plant biosecurity, climate change, agricultural sustainability, digital transitions, co-design, and participatory environmental management, among others.   

Prior publications

2021 Economic and Social Research Council – £19,353 (Co-applicant: Embedding co-design in agri-environmental policy development); 

2020 Research England/Sheffield University – £19,000 (Co-applicant: Including harder-to-reach stakeholders in the design of post-Brexit agri-environmental policy); 

2018 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) – £ 603,785 (Co-author: Agri-Environmental Governance Post-Brexit (3 year project));

2012 NERC Water Security Knowledge Exchange Programme - £18,040 (Lead applicant: Knowledge-transfer with UK catchment management initiatives); 

2011 Arts and Humanities Research Council - £23, 270 (Lead applicant: Investigating the paradox of public participation and de-politicization).

D.Phil students:

• University of Oxford: Thora Hermann: “International Environmental Policy Making and Indigenous Forest Use: The Case of the Pewenche Indians, Chile”, 1999-2002
• University of Oxford: Zoe Morrison: “Britain’s Shameful Places: Examining Constructions of ‘Social Exclusion’ – Towards Spaces Beyond Social Divisions”. 1999-2002
• University of Oxford: Dena Pedynowski: “The Evolution of Effectiveness of a Trans-boundary Biosphere Reserve: A Case Study of the Glacier Waterton Lakes Biosphere Reserves”. 1999-2002

In 2011, linked to my work on the Loweswater Care Project, I received a Lancaster University Staff Prize for making complicated research accessible and exciting to the general public, young people and non-specialists