I am a political ecologist interested in conservation ideas and strategies, how those ideas and strategies become on-the-ground conservation activities, and the beliefs and philosophies about society and nature that underpin conservation decision-making processes. My academic background is in modern foreign languages and human geography. I developed an academic interest in Tanzania after working for a Tanzanian tour operator for 18 months, and for my MA thesis went on to study the discursive framings of conservation and development revealed by debates about the so-called ‘Serengeti Highway’.

During my PhD I examined the the ‘corridor’ as a phenomenon in wildlife conservation, and how it is unfolding across Tanzania’s conservation landscape. I explored the different ways in which corridors for conservation are constructed discursively by key stakeholder groups, the complex and political processes by which they manifest materially, and the impacts those material manifestations of conservation space have on the people who must live within/beside them. My research contributes to theory on the production of conservation space, providing a fuller understanding of the messiness of conservation policy-making in Tanzania, and explicate the roles of non-human and non-living actors in both these processes.

I am currently employed by the University of Edinburgh as Post-Doctoral Research Assistant in Ecological Restoration Partnership Development, on the project Restoration Partnership Development (RPD), funded by the Endangered Landscapes Programme. In this role I have supported the design of a tool for mapping and deliberating the perspectives of diverse stakeholders at a restoration project site in eastern Cumbria. The work will contribute to a wider body of work on understanding the values held by restoration project stakeholders (wider community stakeholder and/or professional partnership stakeholders) across the UK, in order to make those projects a) more effective and b) more just.