There are two foci to my research interests and practice. One concerns project evaluation, particularly developmental evaluation involving second-order or recursive learning processes of the stakeholders involved. The second concerns enactive and embodied sense-making at the human-technological and human-environmental interfaces. These practices and interests come together in recognising that we live in and through complex adaptive systems of language and semiotics, and the discourses and power differentials that inform these systems of meaning.
Through applying various approaches to analysing language and texts as data, I am currently working on papers and studies:
- exploring stakeholder accounts of air-borne biological and particulate matter;
- bringing to the fore the values and framing in news media accounts of illegal sewage discharges within a pro-privatisation discourse;
- examining whether self-reports of connectedness to nature translate into differences in environmentally aware behaviour and the accounts of direct contact with nature;
- developing work in evaluating climate change communication strategies and impacts; and
- investigating the conceptual metaphors and cognitive construals in British newspapers and in the House of Commons by elected MPs about the expansion of ultra-low emissions zones (ULEZ) given the UK's climate commitments.
Past and present PhD research I have supervised has examined topics such as:
- Social Networking in SME business development in Guinea
- Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Ghana
- Vertical Plant Farming and Sustainability
- Climate Vulnerability And Humanitarian Aid
- Governance for Resilience in the Niger Delta