School of Geography & Geosciences
Department of Geography & Sustainable Development

Biography

My background is as an environmental geographer. My doctoral research investigated sustainability issues and management regimes around the UK Coast, focusing on the Severn Estuary, Essex Estuaries, Ceredigion Coast and Chichester Harbour. Following an internship at the University of Delaware and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, US), I took up a post as a postdoctoral research associate with the Marine and Coastal Environment Research Group at Cardiff University, where I was a principle investigator on a series of large scale European research projects concerning coastal and marine issues: EUROSION, ECOPORTS, COASTATLANIC, COREPOINT, SPICOSA and IMCORE.

My research interests have focused on the marine and coastal environment. They centre on four linked themes:

1. I conduct social science research at local, national and international scales, as part of ongoing efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of institutions for environmental management.
2. My work often involves large multi-disciplinary teams looking at the unique challenges facing the marine and coastal environment, including climate change adaptation at the coast. This involves both international collaboration and research based on a number of estuarine and coastal ecosystems around Europe.
3. I am also interested in how scientific investigation can engage with sustainability issues by taking an interdisciplinary approach, and how scientific research can be better linked with policy and management.

More recently, my interest in climate change adaptation has led to research in rural areas of developing countries, particularly Uganda.