I am a PhD candidate, in my final year, within the human geography department at the University of Birmingham, and specifically working within the sub-discipline of the geographies of children and young people. I am also an artist and outdoor learning practitioner. In my arts practice I am interested in human relations with materialities, specifically at points of decay, rust and decomposition, examining the liminal and boundless entangling of naturecultures through focusing on installations and drawings of found materials and organic matter. I am further interested in how communities articulate their collective socio-material identities in relation to natures and specifically how woodlands become entangled in social and oral histories, storytelling and embodied perceptions of place. I have previously worked with children researching, mapping and walking their local greenspaces and have experience as a forest school leader.

I further currently work part-time with an outdoor learning charity developing programmes and resources for place-based learning. I spent two months last winter living on the River Dyfi estuary at the Smugglers Cove Boatyard and swimming daily in the estuary, the river at Machynlleth and the River Dulas close to the gallery. I spent time with the woods and hills around the valley, in the damp mosses and lichens that fill these places.