Research interests

Broadly: food and its impact on the environment. More specifically, beverages and their environmental impact. Even more specifically, English wine, a topic I had the pleasure of exploring during my MBiol, and one that opened my eyes to how much complexity sits behind winemaking.

This research made me think about food not just as a product but as a landscape. Within this thinking, soil organic carbon has become a growing fascination. Healthy soil underpins everything: productivity, carbon sequestration, ecosystem resilience. The more we can aid soils and soil health, the better for the planet and for us. Alongside this, I am increasingly interested in perennial cropping as a practical response to land degradation. My day to day interests lie in how we account for the environmental cost of what we produce through life-cycle assessments and carbon accounting frameworks.

What connects all of these threads is a broader question: how do we feed ourselves without destroying the systems that make feeding ourselves possible? That question leads me into food-nature conflict, dietary shifts, and the tradeoffs farmers face between environmental and economic pressures – since sustainable food systems only work if the people producing food can sustain themselves too. Farmer wellbeing, precision farming, and the role of climate change in reshaping agricultural practice all sit within this same web of concerns.

Ultimately, I want to be in policy, making significant changes to the food system we rely on, because understanding the problem is only worthwhile if it leads somewhere