Over the last 25 years I’ve developed a deep practical and research-based understanding of community, collaboration and grassroots-led change - much of it learned the hard way, through my own lived experience of community-led housing. My journey started out as a founder and Director of Bristol-based Ashley Vale Action Group in the 2000s, where I went on to build my own timber-framed home as part of the Ashley Vale self build project.

Having worked for 10 years on science, policy and communication in the environment sector, on completing my family home I went on to become a founding director of workers’ co-op Ecomotive in 2007.

As a community development practitioner and community-led housing consultant, I have extensive experience of working across the boundaries between communities, professionals and institutions: enabling community groups, delivering consultancy projects for local authorities and businesses, and designing and facilitating training, collaborative processes and community engagement workshops, speaking at local, national and international events and hosting tours of Ashley Vale self build. I gained accreditation as a community mediator in 2015, complementing my practical experience of facilitating dialogue across different perspectives, and qualified as a community-led housing enabler in 2019.

In 2018 I was awarded a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust fellowship, which supported me to visit Germany, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand to research alternative models of housing delivery and bring back knowledge to support the growth of the self build and community-led housing sector in the UK. I am also a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and the School of Social Entrepreneurs.

Between 2019-2025 I carried out doctoral research at the University of the West of England, exploring how different understandings of community shape leadership, power, participation and benefit within community-led housing, from the lived experience of individual groups through to intermediary organisations and wider policy systems. This research led me to develop PORTAL, a multidimensional framework designed to make different perspectives on community more visible and support reflection, dialogue and practical action.

I graduated with my PhD in 2026, and now work as a Research Associate at UWE, where I continue to bridge research and practice at the intersections of community, housing and planning. My current work includes leading an RTPI-funded project exploring how ‘community’ is understood and worked with in planning practice, bringing professionals, community practitioners and residents together to explore different perspectives and develop shared learning.