Research
My research sits at the intersection of environmental governance, science and technology studies, and political ecology. The central question across most of it is how different ways of knowing and relating to rivers — different ontologies — get included in or excluded from governance processes, and what more pluralistic, more-than-human institutions might look like.
My doctoral work focused on participatory water governance in Brazil, from local river committees to national policy frameworks. Three papers came out of that in 2024.
Environmental governance
Most of my academic work sits here — how participatory processes are designed, who gets included in environmental decision-making, and what assumptions about knowledge and nature are built into governance frameworks. My PhD and all three 2024 papers address this directly, drawing on fieldwork in Brazil and theoretical work developed with David Ludwig at Wageningen.
Rights of nature
I came to rights of nature through river governance rather than law — interested less in the legal mechanisms than in the underlying shift in how humans relate to the more-than-human world. I’ve worked on this theoretically in my research and practically through the UK Rights of Nature Network, the Assembly of River Beings on the Exe and Interspecies Council, and a growing number of facilitation commissions.
River advocacy
Rivers run through everything I do. The Doce in Brazil, devastated by the Samarco disaster and the subject of my MSc. The Exe, where I helped organise a gathering that tried to give the river a voice. The Dart, where I’ve facilitated a river rights experience. The work is about governance and law, but it starts with the river itself.
Selected outputs
Rickard, T. & Ludwig, D. (2024). Rivers across worlds: A conceptual framework for ontological inclusion and exclusion in participatory water governance. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 8(1). doi.org/10.1177/25148486241280157
Rickard, T., Ludwig, D. & Rajão, R. (2024). Going upstream: A pluri-ontological analysis and proposal for Brazilian participatory water governance. Ecosystems and People, 20(1). doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2024.2405683
Rickard, T. & Ludwig, D. (2024). Dam the River: Ontological exclusion in global and Brazilian integrated water resources management. Environmental Science & Policy, 156. doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103755
Rickard, T. & Oliveira, B. (2018). Participatory Monitoring: An overview of theory and practice. doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.20157.52969
Rickard, T. & Tickell, P. (2026). TAKING ROOT: A Year of Growth, Learning, and Connection in UK Rights of Nature. UK Rights of Nature Network. doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.13710.01607
Research profiles: ResearchGate · Google Scholar · GEOS Project, WUR