I work at the messy intersections where environmental crises collide with human lives.
My research follows marine social-ecological systems buckling under multiple pressures: plastic pollution strangling coral reefs, climate shifts eroding sacred coastal sites, governance systems struggling to coordinate across dozens of competing actors. These aren’t abstract problems: they’re happening to coastal communities I’ve worked with for years, and they’re revealing patterns that matter globally.
For instance, these environmental challenges can intertwine with something very subtle: the collective misperceptions that keep us stuck. Through studies spanning dozens of countries, my colleagues and I have documented how people everywhere underestimate others’ concern for environmental issues—a phenomenon called pluralistic ignorance that quietly undermines the collective action we desperately need.
Meanwhile, in remote island villages, I’m collaborating with communities to co-create citizen science protocols that actually work when researchers leave, investigating how immersive nature interactions shape mental wellbeing, and documenting what happens to cultural identities when the ocean that defined them fundamentally changes.
My methodological philosophy? Use whatever tools that can illuminate the problem and its solutions: expert elicitation workshops, cross-sectional surveys, participatory photovoice, expert elicitation, ecosystem service assessments.
I’m energised by research that bridges disciplinary silos without losing rigour, that takes governance theory into the field to see how polycentricity actually unfolds (spoiler: it’s messier and more political than textbooks suggest), and that maintains genuine partnerships with communities experiencing these changes firsthand.
I’m eager to collaborate with researchers exploring: multi-stressor impacts on coastal systems, social psychological barriers to environmental action, participatory monitoring approaches, governance transitions in data-scarce contexts, blue economy and ecosystem service linkages, or really anyone curious about why collective environmental problems persist despite widespread individual concern.
Let’s connect if you believe governance scholarship should serve the people most affected by environmental change (and if you’re willing to get your methods creatively tangled).