Research

I carry out research into cultural connections to place, most recently for Essex University whose oral history project within the sociology department explores people’s feeling for nature and the connection they have with it. This includes relationships with particular landscapes, environments and places as well everyday connections to birds, animals, plants and insect life.

I am interested in work that bridges the sciences and the arts.

Other research areas include project work for Waveney & Blyth Arts. In 2015, I coordinated a project for them on Doggerland, the Mesolithic lands drowned by post-glacial rising sea levels, now disappeared under the North Sea . This brought together specialist researchers and a group of artists to reflect on an extraordinary period of our history and create new art works in response to the science.

Doggerland may hold lessons for us—living through another period of climate change with its impact on places and people. Loss of land, loss of homes, migration – these are all common themes.