I’m a researcher and strategic adviser working on complex social, environmental and technological problems. My career has moved from leading strategic communication and social-impact design in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the UK into critical and practice-based research and advisory work. Today I work across academia, public policy and civil society. I help institutions and cross-sector teams understand complex issues, examine how people and environments shape each other, and turn research into strategies they can act on.
My PhD in environmental geography, completed at the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research (University of Wollongong), explored how people experience and respond to planetary disturbance. It looked at what happens to everyday life, institutions and human agency when the environmental conditions we rely on can no longer be taken for granted. That work underpins my current interests in planetary risk, climate adaptation and governance, and the technological changes reshaping how decisions are made.
I have held research and teaching roles at universities in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. These include Swinburne University of Technology, Auckland University of Technology and the University of Auckland. At Auckland I was a research fellow co-leading a Marsden Fund-supported project on climate governance and the futures of artificial intelligence. I have also been a Visiting Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, and took part in the Anthropocene Campus at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin.
My applied work has included leading complex, multi-stakeholder projects in the public sector, international NGOs and independent consultancy. As founder and director of Antipode Studio, and co-founder of Ecological Associates, I have led research, systems mapping and research translation for scientific bodies, think tanks and public health organisations across Australasia and the UK. At Christian Aid in the UK, as design manager, I led brand and public campaign strategy across humanitarian programmes, making complex development issues accessible to wide audiences. At Auckland Council, as climate action specialist, I led resilience planning and facilitated co-design processes drawing on mātauranga Māori to support community-led climate adaptation. Across these roles, my work connects rigorous qualitative research with applied strategy. It brings together institutional goals, technical evidence and community perspectives to produce policy frameworks, governance tools and lasting public outcomes.
My approach is analytical, collaborative and, where useful, experimental. I draw on:
Critical and qualitative research: Fieldwork, observation, synthesis and experimental methods that surface hidden assumptions and power dynamics.
Relational and environmental thinking: Approaches from the environmental humanities and more-than-human geography that treat ecosystems, infrastructure and non-human actors as part of the problem.
Systems mapping: Visualising how social and ecological factors interact, to find where change is most possible.
Co-design and cultural frameworks: Participatory processes, including place-based knowledge and Indigenous frameworks such as mātauranga Māori, that bring different and competing perspectives together and build shared ownership.
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