Research Overview

My research interests include international environmental politics and sustainability, global development, and North-South relations. My specific expertise covers marine policy and blue economy, international climate politics and global inequalities, indigenous peoples, as well as discourse analysis. My approach is framed within deconstructive and postcolonial approaches.

Research Interests

I obtained my PhD in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva. My research is interdisciplinary, drawing on international relations, development studies, continental philosophy, and human geography. My main focus is on the analysis of discourses and narratives surrounding development policies, international environmental protection and sustainability (including climate politics), as well as marine policy and the blue economy. My expertise spans across global, national and local scales.

My PhD explored development narratives through a discourse analysis that revealed how traditional knowledge was systematically undermined and how development policies were underpinned by colonial thinking. It also scrutinised external interventions conducted on behalf of nature conservation. These are themes that I have kept exploring since. For instance, I have shown that the tradition/modernity dichotomy that is often used in the case of Indigenous peoples maintains harmful hierarchisations (rich/poor, advanced/backward etc.) and justifies neo-colonial interventions. My research on the marine environment has highlighted the need to decolonise knowledge and representations about the sea (moving away from Western and terra-centric visions that have represented the sea as placeless and further acknowledging and valuing non-Western, Indigenous and traditional representations and uses of the marine environment).

From a methodological perspective, I am proficient in quantitative and qualitative mixed methods. This includes surveys and interviews, discourse analysis, and qualitative and quantitative content analysis. I am also trained in PhotoVoice, a community based participatory research whereby participants document their own engagement and experience with the subject investigated.

External Roles

Member of the Office for Environmental Protection College of Experts.

Member of the Motion for the Ocean steering group, Blackpool Council.

Member of a Scientific Steering Committee, regarding an analysis framework to estimate the environmental impact of chronic kidney disease, AstraZeneca

External Examiner, BSc (Hons) Geography and BSc (Hons) Global Development and Sustainability, Bath Spa University, UK

External Examiner, MA Climate, Justice and Sustainability, University of Limerick, Ireland

Associate Researcher, Fondation Pierre du Bois pour l'Histoire du Temps Present, Geneva, Switzerland, Fondation Pierre du Bois - (fondation-pierredubois.ch)

Member, International Just Sustainable Blue Economy Research Group (IJSBERG), Blue Economy Research Group | IJSBERG Model

Research Grants

The Leverhulme Trust, Research Project Grant for the project: "Ocean justice and the blue economy", 2024-27.

BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant for the project: "SeaSights: Deprived seaside towns and the blue economy - insights from young people", 2023-24.

FASS Policy Fund (research and research-related external engagement) for the project: "Representation of the sea and citizen engagement: Governmental bodies' communication strategy", 2023.

Manchester Geographical Society: "Sense of Place in Morecambe", 2022.

PhD Supervision Interests

I am happy to supervise research projects related to my research field (see above), in particular: environmental politics, climate politics, sustainable development, ocean governance, global development, North-South relations, and Indigenous peoples. I am open to inter/cross-disciplinary projects (e.g. international relations, political science, human geography); as well as to a wide-range of qualitative methods (e.g. discourse analysis, photo elicitation, etc.)