About

I’m an ethnographic researcher, photographer and filmmaker who uses creative methods to understand how global issues affect local communities and ecologies. I carry out personal work and collaborative projects with academics, think tanks and NGOs.

My ongoing postgraduate research project examines the emerging seaweed industry on the west coast of Scotland, asking what it means to take agriculture into the sea as we enter a period of ecological uncertainty known as the Anthropocene. Alongside this, I am delving into the intertwined histories of photography, seaweed, science and social anthropology to inform my visual practice. You can read more about these experiments on my blog.

I have also recently been co-investigator for a multidisciplinary (arts, physical and social sciences) project at the University of Manchester exploring the socio-ecological legacies of the city’s cotton industry.

These projects draw on my long-term interest in the political ecology of agriculture and the futures of rural areas. Previous projects have taken me on fishing boats in Japan, to dairy farms in Ireland and to cattle auctions in England.

I speak advanced Japanese, have worked as a project manager in the charity sector (refugees/forced migration/higher education) and as an educator in schools in Japan and universities in the UK. I’ve lived in Japan and Malaysia, spent a significant amount of time in Myanmar and travelled solo overland from Japan to the UK following the old Silk Road, via Central Asia and Iran.

I am currently based in Oban, Scotland.

Qualifications

• MA Anthropological Research, distinction (2019), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

• MA Visual Anthropology, distinction (2017)

Both at the prestigious Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology (GCVA), University of Manchester.

I also hold a BA in History with first class honours (2006) from the University of Kent, and have completed a short course in Narrative Non-Fiction Writing (2015) at City University, London.