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Biography

I have played a leadership role in research worth £9.3M, and been a funded member in teams that have secured a further £1.8M since completing my PhD in 2005. I have 39 peer-reviewed ISI-listed journal articles published or in press (36 of these since 2005, 13 as first author), in addition to book chapters and other publications. I am currently working on three books: one on communicating research for impact (with Nicky Geeson and others); one on land degradation and climate change (with Lindsay Stringer); and one on conservation conflicts (with ACES colleagues). My work has been covered by the Guardian, Radio 4 and international media. I have conducted international consultancy work for UNDP/UNEP and the Global Environment Facility, and was invited as a lead author to the “Socio-Economic and Knowledge Management” Working Group to provide a synthesis of current research and make recommendations for the last Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. I am a member of the Rural Economy and Land Use programme's Policy Analysts' Advisory Group, the Advisory Network for the Foresight Land Use Futures project (Government Office for Science), and the science-policy working group of DesertNet International. I have also led teams contracted to provide input to the UK Government Commission for Rural Communities’ Uplands Inquiry and the uplands review for the Government Office for Science Foresight Land Use Futures project. I am a contributing author to the upland chapter of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, and have contributed to research that is part of the Scottish Government’s Rural Land Use study, which reported to their Land Use Summit in 2009. In 2008, I became the first UK researcher to be awarded a joint fellowship by the US Social Science Research Council and ESRC, and in 2009 I was awarded the ESRC’s Michael Young Prize, “rewarding the very best early career social scientists whose research has the potential to make a positive and far-reaching impact beyond academia”. I am a grant reviewer for ESRC, Swiss Science Foundation and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research, a reviewer for 13 journals and Oxford University Press, and am on the Editorial Board of an ISI-listed journal. I supervise 2 PhD students and 3 Post-Doctoral Research Assistants.

What motivated you to engage with the public?

I am an interdisciplinary environmental researcher, working with stakeholders to better understand, monitor and adapt to environmental change in a range of developed and developing world contexts, mainly focussing on preventing and overcoming land degradation in mountain and desert regions. I am particularly interested in researching knowledge exchange mechanisms, to try and understand how to better facilitate more effective knowledge exchange.

Describe the public engagement work you have done

I am conducting research into knowledge exchange mechanisms, to try and understand how to better facilitate knowledge exchange. This is currently being done through the EU-funded Ecocyles project, the RELU-funded Sustainable Uplands project and the British Academy Involved project, and I led a proposal under review with RELU called “transforming knowledge for upland change”, which I will hear about shortly. I am writing a book proposal titled, “Communicating Research for Impact” at the moment.