Academic Research
I am working on a PhD exploring the intersections of food genetics and food security, in the Department of Geography at the Open University.
In September 2007, at Queen Mary, University of London, I achieved a Masters with Distinction in Human Geography. In my thesis, titled Geographers and gardeners, actors and networks, I explored the phenomenon of guerrilla gardening. This activity could, I suggested, force a radical reconceptualisation of the politics of public space. In doing so, it would also lead us to reconsider the agency of nature in such a politics.
The thesis drew on the work of urban theorists such as Don Mitchell, and of science studies commentators like Bruno Latour. The thesis was awarded First Prize in the Landscape Research Group's annual competition. During my MA, I also wrote book reviews for the Urban Geography Research Group.
Read review of The Trapese Collective's Do it yourself: a handbook for changing our world
Read review of Mike Davis' Buda's Wagon: A brief history of the car bomb
Earlier, I earned a First in Geography from the University of Glasgow in 2006, writing a thesis on the intersections of sexuality and space. To question the extent to which 'queer space' may be considered a 'site of resistance,' I examined the queer club Ghetto which, at the time, was located in Soho. Undertaking in depth interviews with regular club goers and owner Simon Hobart, the thesis presented an understanding of queer space fraught with multiplicities - what for one was liberating could, for another, act as a claustrophobic inhibition of identity.