My academic interest has a particular focus in exploring the intersection between landscape, nature, place, history, memory and identity. These are themes I bring to my creative writing workshops and short courses, as well as to my own creative work.

Doctoral Research and Writing

As a practice-led research degree, my doctorate centres on a work of narrative nonfiction prose exploring the complex intertwining of place and self by drawing on the thinking in anthropology and cultural geography, but also the lived experience of people in the landscapes that have defined my life.

Delving into the histories and culture of Northeast Scotland, Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, and the post-industrial landscapes of Northwest England, ‘Mealldroma: A Search for Home’ – Exploring Place and Identity through Autobiographical Narrative Landscapes, can be seen as an autoethnographic work of Deep Mapping and Literary Cartography that connects seemingly disparate regions with both the historic and contemporary narratives that continue to shape our island archipelago.

My research methodology involved conducting audio-recorded, field-based interviews alongside historiographical approaches, and included a residency at Island Dark Room on the Isle of Lewis in 2022. The research was funded through a New King’s Studentship, awarded in 2020. I successfully defended my viva in November 2023 and graduated in June 2024. 

Independent Postdoctoral Work

My postdoctoral research has centred on creative placemaking through experimental and participatory research to explore social and environmental issues, alongside commissions to run community-based creative writing workshops.

Clients include Aberdeen City Council, The Barn Arts, Open Book Reading and Station House Media Unit.

My interest in Deep Mapping led to a commission on a pilot heritage project with Aberdeen City Council in Nov. 2023 through funding from Historic Environment Scotland as part of their Heritage and Place Programme. The project ran throughout 2024 and involved both collaborative creative work and community focussed research.

Community Research and Engagement – I have worked as a freelance community engagement officer and participatory research facilitator to explore community relationships with place in Aberdeen city centre, and how those communities might engage with heritage. I conducted numerous interviews, ran focus groups and creative workshops to explore themes relating to the wider Heritage and Place Programme, delivering an engagement report and analysis and taking part in a co-design process for an intended heritage activities plan as part of a further funding bid. Further to this, I participated in workshops over 2024/25 to help devise creative approaches to community engagement and development for Station House Media Unit, and ran two workshops as part of the Woodside Connect project and Aberdeen City Council Local Outcome Improvement Plan.

I currently work in community engagement and outreach as a Learning and Access Officer for Aberdeenshire Museums Service.

Qualifications

• BSc (Hons) Environmental Geography – 1997 University of Aberdeen
• Cert. Higher Education (Creative Writing), with Distinction – 2016 Open University
• PgCert Social Anthropology, with Merit – 2018 University of Aberdeen
• MLitt Creative Writing, with Distinction – 2019 University of Aberdeen
• PhD Creative Writing (non-fiction) – 2023 University of Aberdeen

Supervised by Professor David Wheatley, with viva-voce examiners Dr Wayne Price and Professor Emeritus English, Exeter University, Andrew McNeillie.

Conferences / Symposia

• Reading – ‘elm is me and I am elm: human-nature entanglements and the story of the wych elm’, Tree Talks, online, Museum of the White Mountains, Plymouth State University, October 17, 2025
• Paper – ‘This is Our Place: Narrative and Interpretation at the Callanish Standing Stones’, The Lithic Gathering: Shifting Temporalities and Mythologies of Ritual Stone Structures, The Stones Project, Visual Culture Research Group, Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, May 16, 2025
• Delegate – Reimagining Landscapes Conference: the Rights of Nature, Future Places Centre, Lancaster Univeristy, Lancaster, July 04 & 05, 2024.
• Delegate – Scottish Society for Northern Studies Summer Conference, Royal Northern and University Club, Aberdeen, June 26-28, 2024.
• Reading – ‘Sycamore’ – A Day for Nature, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Stirling University, Stirling, Nov 04, 2023.
• Chair – Postgraduate Student Conference, School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, 01 & 02 Dec. 2022.
• Paper – ‘On Place and Time: A Creative-Critical Approach to Practicing Place’ – Here, There and Somewhere In Between: Placing, Practicing, Configuring, Practicing Place Centre, University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Eichstãtt, Bayern. Nov 10 & 11, 2022.
• Paper – ‘Between Sea and Sky: A Return to Lewis’ – Deep Wheel Aberdonia, Sir Herbert Grierson Centre for Textual Criticism and Comparative Literary History, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, May 04, 2022.

Peer Reviewed Publication

‘Autoethnography as a Creative Methodology – Exploring Place and Identity through Autobiographical Narrative Landscapes’, in ‘Part III Epistomes: Placing Knowledge’, Earnshaw, Sarah (ed), Cultural Practices of Place (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), pp. 185-206

‘Traces’, in Andrew McNeillie and J.M. Lockhart (eds), Archipelago 2.3 (Thame, Ox. Clutag Press, 2024), pp. 107-115

‘From the Ground, Light’, in Yin F. Lim, Andrew Kenrick with Iona Macduff (eds), Hinterland 14 – Climate Writing Special (Norwich, University of East Anglia, UEA Press, 2023), pp. 91-109

‘The Don: A Sacred River’, in Jo Jones & Neil Curtis (eds), Four Rivers, Deep Maps – Collected Responses on the Don and Dee Rivers (North-East Scotland) and the Derbarl Yerrigan and Dyarlgarro Beeliar (Swan and Canning Rivers, Western Australia), (Perth, WA, UWA Publishing, 2022), pp. 51-72

‘In Search of High Ground’, in Ben Wills-Eve and Jacob O’Neill (eds), Epoch Issue 3 (Lancaster University, March 2021), online at https://www.epoch-magazine.com/home3.

‘Orkney: Where Past is Present’, in Rachel Robertson, Wayne Price and Daniel O’Leary (eds), Pause: New Writing About Time and Change (Perth, WA, Curtin University, PWP Curtin, 2019), pp. 27-32

‘The Stillness to be Found in Motion: On Travel and Writing’, in Ashleigh Angus, Adam Kealley (eds), Causeway / Cabhsair Magazine V9.2 (Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press, 2018), pp. 16-20