My research interests
My research explores how communities work, how people exercise collective agency, and what enables communities, organisations and institutions to collaborate effectively across different perspectives and forms of knowledge. I work at the intersection of research and practice, with a particular interest in translating complex ideas into useful frameworks, tools and processes for reflection and action.
My PhD thesis, ‘(Re)interpreting community: an exploration of the concept of community within the context of the community-led housing sector in England’, developed a multidimensional framework for understanding and working with communities of different kinds.
Building on this framework, I’m continuing to explore its practical application across diverse sectors, including collective housing, planning and community-led retrofit.
I’m currently involved in a number of planning-related research projects at the University of the West of England, including leading an RTPI-funded study exploring how ‘community’ is understood and worked with in planning practice. This work is extending my research into questions of professional practice, community engagement and collaboration across organisational and disciplinary boundaries.
My current research agenda has grown from a long-standing interest in alternative housing types that exist globally, and what makes certain models succeed in different contexts.
My 2018/19 Churchill Fellowship took me to Germany, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand to explore these questions across countries with very different histories, policies and attitudes to community-led housing.
Throughout my career as a community-led housing enabler, I have also visited and researched diverse grassroots housing projects across Canada, USA, Denmark, Ireland and of course the UK.
While my current research interests are mainly based in the social sciences, my first degree in Biology allows me to bring an ecological lens to my understanding of people, systems and environments, giving my work a broader and more holistic perspective.
