My research interests are in cultures of nature, environment-society relations and philosophical questions concerning the nonhuman.

Current research projects

The work that plants do: As part of the growing field of critical plant studies I am interested in new understanding of plant labour and subjectivity. I am developing a project investigating the socio-technical and science-fiction speculative approaches of plants 'beyond Earth'.

Glacial flour power: A collaborative GCRF project examining the potential of glacial flour as a novel fertiliser in high-mountain agriculture in the Himalaya. I am Co-I in a multidisciplinary team, interested in decolonial and alternative cosmological understandings of plants.

Anthroposcenes/Chthulucenic landscapes: a series of essay-based works on the entanglements of nature and culture in the Anthropocene, including cinematic apocalypse, posthumanism, and forthcoming work on the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh featuring pandas, gannets, plant explorers and sheds. This also builds on a series of workshops and ongoing collaborations with the Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network, and our interest in how deep temporal horizons reconfigure understandings of and responses to environmental loss.

Past research projects

Plant politics in Pakistan: funded by the RGS/IBG, this collaborative project explores the socio-ecological politics of plants as lively commodities in urban Pakistan. We are interested in how plants circulate in gated communities, private households and municipalities, and the implications for social justice and environmental sustainability in one of the world’s most rapidly-urbanising nations.

Urban Green Commons: Based on collaborative fieldwork in Lisbon, Portugal, funded by the Carnegie Trust (2012-14), this project explored the legacies of post-colonialism and the impact of urban austerity on public gardening cultures, and compared top-down state-sanctioned improvement projects with bottom-up claims to urban space for subsistence.

Ancestral Time: A major AHRC-funded interdisciplinary project (2013-16), investigating the ethical horizons of Scottish religious organisations and spiritual activists. The project was especially interested in the temporalities of non-secular approaches to climate change and environmental loss.

Domestic Wild: Emerging from my PhD research (2006-10) into the everyday philosophies and practices of domestic gardening in greater London, I have a series of publications on questions of death, memory and inheritance as well as encountering and killing critters in the humble domestic garden. These culminated in a recent monograph.