Profile

I am a geographer interested in animals, the more-than-human, and environments. At Lancaster, I am teaching and researching the Sociology of Climate Change. I am currently researching the birds of Morecambe Bay, exploring the connections between the social and cultural life of humans, seabirds, and the bay. I am also the Chair of the newly-founded Animal Geography Working Group of the Royal Geographical Society.

My first book, ‘Veganism, Archives, and Animals,’ was published with Routledge in 2021. The book provides a unique and timely contribution to debates within animal and more-than-human geographies and is the first of its kind in “vegan geographies.” The book draws from my doctoral research on veganism in Britain (University of Birmingham, 2020). I am currently writing a second book on veganism, What is Veganism For?, which will be published in June 2024 with Bristol University Press.

Between 2020 and 2022, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge on an ERC-funded project researching urban chickens in London. This research responds to changing demands on food systems, ecologies, and urban space, seeking to understand how non-human life is governed and regulated in cities. I am currently writing a book, The Chicken City, about this research (Manchester University Press).

In 2021, I was appointed as a Royal Geographical Society/Wiley Digital Archives Fellow (2021), receiving a fellowship to research animals in geographical exploration. My project is a Wiley Case Study, with an online curated exhibit. In 2021-22, I was also a fellow on the Global Urban History Project’s Dream Conversations series on Cities and the Anthropocene in 2021.

From 2016 to 2017, I worked in the archives of animal activist Richard D. Ryder at the British Library on a PhD placement with Dr Polly Russell and Gill Ridgeley, producing the British Library’s online curation, ‘Archiving Activism’.

Other recent projects include a feminist geography research project theorising academic conferences as microcosms of the university, an ongoing project on more-than-human metabolisms, and a newly launched project on alternative communities and the seek for connection in capitalist Britain.

I currently teach on SOCL221 Climate Change and Society, SOCL521 Environment and Culture, SOCL931 Methods in STS, and SOCL201 Skills for Researching Social Life. I also supervise PhD students, Masters projects, and undergraduate dissertations.