About
I work at the edges of things — between research and practice, between human institutions and the rivers they govern, between the UK and Brazil where most of my academic work was rooted.
Background
My PhD, completed at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in 2023, examined participatory water governance in Brazil across scales — from local river committees to national frameworks. The question running through it was how different ways of knowing and relating to rivers get included or written out of governance processes. Three papers from that research came out in 2024, in Environment and Planning E, Ecosystems and People, and Environmental Science & Policy.
Back in the UK, I’ve been drawn into the growing movement around river rights and more-than-human governance. I’m on the steering and legal group of the Friends of the River Exe, where I helped design and facilitate the Assembly of River Beings — a gathering that tried to actually give the river a voice in decisions about its future. I was interim coordinator of the UK Rights of Nature Network through late 2025 and into early 2026, and I serve as Director for Nature at We Are Nature Based CIC, where my role is literally to hold nature’s perspective in the room.
The freelance work spans teaching, facilitation, research, and expert advisory — recently with Natural England, the Royal Veterinary College, Reading University and ARIA, Exeter Law School, and the River Dart.
I came to this work through Schumacher College and Dartington in the mid-2010s, which shaped how I think about the relationship between inner work and outer change. I practice Zen, Qi Gong, and sit with Quakers — each of which continue to change how I listen and how I facilitate.
I’m based in Totnes, Devon.
Education
PhD, Environmental Systems — Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, 2020–2023. Thesis: Global and Brazilian multi-scale participatory water governance.
MSc, Environmental Systems — Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, 2018–2019. Post-disaster participatory governance, Doce River basin.
River Lives, Living Rivers — Wageningen University & Research, 2019. Transdisciplinary summer school with Profs. Rutgerd Boelens & Jeroen Vos.
BSc Human Sciences — University of Sussex, 2007–2011. Community forestry policy in Brazil, Nepal, and Cameroon.
Training
Living Waters — Hawkwood / Schumacher College, 2025–26. Eight-week ontopoetic engagement with rivers and nature as sentient and communicative. With Dr. Peter Reason.
Bioregional Learning Days — The Bioregional Learning Centre, 2025. Two-day immersion applying bioregioning principles to South Devon.
Ecological Leadership & Facilitation — Schumacher College, 2015. Eighty-hour experiential programme in facilitation, systems thinking, and nature connection. With Dr. Jenny McKewen.
Approach
I work across disciplines and sectors — moving between academic research, public policy, grassroots advocacy, and facilitation practice, often in the same project. I’m drawn to questions that don’t fit neatly into one field, and to processes where the people in the room — and the places and rivers outside it — all need to be heard.