RESEARCH PROFILE
My research is shaped by a conviction of the necessity to understand the social as something coproduced through interaction with the material, and by a drive to examine the ways by which the world is brought into being through practice. Methodologically, my work is rooted in qualitative approaches with a particular expertise in the use of ethnography and interviewing as research tools. Empirically, my research has become articulated around city, presently specialising in the way citizens engage with smart cities.
Citizen engagement in smart cities
I am a Research Associate for Smart Cities in the Making: Learning from Milton Keynes, a two year (2017-2019) ESRC funded project whose aim is to examine a city in the process of it’s efforts to become smarter. My contribution lies in the fields of smart citizenship and the practices of work and employment in the smart city. With the project Co-Is, our aim in both these strands is to understand the place of people living and working in a smart city, and how their activities do or do not allow them to contribute to the development of smart. Can smart create new forms of citizenship and does it engender different or varying modes of digital labour?
Prior to this (2016), I was a Research Associate on a the Making Meaningful Metrics project, a speculative project funded by an internal seedcorn competition which sought to generate interdisciplinary research. The project used focus groups and Rich Picture methodology to investigate citizen engagement with transport metrics.
Faith and urban space
In was a Research Associate on London Dharma (2015), a project examining the articulation of the Buddhist faith in contemporary London. Employing an urban ethnography approach, we set out to understand how, as faith relatively new to the UK, Buddhism was becoming integrated into the material and cultural life of the city.
Human plant interactions
My PhD, which I completed in 2014, examined how the conservation of the seeds of food plants serves as a practice which contributes to the bringing about of food security. Using ethnographic and interview research techniques, I assembled studies of three core seed banks located in the UK and overseas. This data was supplemented by interviews undertaken with key informants in science, policy and campaigning arenas associated with the plant genetic resources sector. In my thesis, I explored the futuring underway in seed banking practice to argue that plant genetic resource conservation acts as a way of engendering food security through resilience. I also considered the politics of seed banking, demonstrating how seeds themselves operate as agents active in the formation of that politics.
Before my PhD I undertook a master's in Human Geography at Queen Mary, University of London, for which I was awarded a Distinction and the Landscape Research Group prize for best dissertation. In this dissertation, I considered how the practice of guerrilla gardening, illicit gardening in urban public space, reconfigures the politics of that public space. In particular, I was attentive to the political role played by the gardeners' plants as well as the acts of gardening.
Citizen engagement in smart cities
I am a Research Associate for Smart Cities in the Making: Learning from Milton Keynes, a two year (2017-2019) ESRC funded project whose aim is to examine a city in the process of it’s efforts to become smarter. My contribution lies in the fields of smart citizenship and the practices of work and employment in the smart city. With the project Co-Is, our aim in both these strands is to understand the place of people living and working in a smart city, and how their activities do or do not allow them to contribute to the development of smart. Can smart create new forms of citizenship and does it engender different or varying modes of digital labour?
Prior to this (2016), I was a Research Associate on a the Making Meaningful Metrics project, a speculative project funded by an internal seedcorn competition which sought to generate interdisciplinary research. The project used focus groups and Rich Picture methodology to investigate citizen engagement with transport metrics.
Faith and urban space
In was a Research Associate on London Dharma (2015), a project examining the articulation of the Buddhist faith in contemporary London. Employing an urban ethnography approach, we set out to understand how, as faith relatively new to the UK, Buddhism was becoming integrated into the material and cultural life of the city.
Human plant interactions
My PhD, which I completed in 2014, examined how the conservation of the seeds of food plants serves as a practice which contributes to the bringing about of food security. Using ethnographic and interview research techniques, I assembled studies of three core seed banks located in the UK and overseas. This data was supplemented by interviews undertaken with key informants in science, policy and campaigning arenas associated with the plant genetic resources sector. In my thesis, I explored the futuring underway in seed banking practice to argue that plant genetic resource conservation acts as a way of engendering food security through resilience. I also considered the politics of seed banking, demonstrating how seeds themselves operate as agents active in the formation of that politics.
Before my PhD I undertook a master's in Human Geography at Queen Mary, University of London, for which I was awarded a Distinction and the Landscape Research Group prize for best dissertation. In this dissertation, I considered how the practice of guerrilla gardening, illicit gardening in urban public space, reconfigures the politics of that public space. In particular, I was attentive to the political role played by the gardeners' plants as well as the acts of gardening.
