The work and ideas brought together on this site are organised around a small number of recurring themes. These reflect long-standing interests rather than fixed positions, and have emerged through a combination of field experience, scholarship, collaboration, and experimentation across different contexts and sectors.
Each theme connects writing, talks, and projects developed at different points in my career, and continues to shape the questions I am exploring now.
Selected writings linked to each theme can be found on the Writing page.
Rewilding
Rewilding has become a central theme in my work because it brings together many of the strands that have defined my career: ecology, systems thinking, place-based practice, and social change. I was drawn to rewilding in the mid-2000s as a response to growing frustration with conservation approaches focused primarily on slowing decline, and through encounters with pioneering initiatives emerging in Europe.
I am interested in rewilding not simply as a conservation technique, but as a process that makes systems visible – ecological, institutional, economic, and cultural – and that offers a more hopeful and empowering narrative of change. Rewilding creates space for experimentation, learning, and participation, rather than relying solely on established institutions to act on society’s behalf.
Within this theme, I explore:
- Rewilding as a scientific practice and a framework for systems change
- The role of place, process, and uncertainty in ecological recovery
- Rewilding as a cultural and economic project, not just an ecological one
Cultures of Nature Engagement
I have a long-standing fascination with the different ways people engage with nature and how these relationships shape both human well-being and the prospects for conservation. This interest has grown out of extended periods of travel, fieldwork, and immersion in birding and wildlife cultures in different societies.
As a back-packing birder, I became aware that activities such as hunting, trapping, keeping, and observing birds are not simply utilitarian or recreational practices, nor are they automatically incompatible with care for wildlife. Rather, they are long-standing ways in which people engage purposefully with nature, satisfying curiosity, developing skills, fostering camaraderie, and providing relaxation, identity, and a sense of belonging. Terrorism
Many conservation narratives treat practices that involve killing or capturing wildlife as morally incompatible with conservation, framing hunters, bird-keepers, and wildlife traders primarily as drivers of decline. I have come to the view that such framings obscures significant shared motivations and desired outcomes. Across very different practices, people frequently seek continuity of wildlife, meaningful engagement with nature, and the ability to pass knowledge, skills, and traditions between generations. This has led me to explore openings for forms of conservation that are co-produced, culturally grounded, and capable of transcending long-standing divisions.
More recently, my focus has been on how familiar practices of engaging with nature are changing and evolving in response to technology and social changes and what these evolving engagements with nature might mean for rewilding, nature enterprises and well-being..
Within this theme, I explore:
- Cultural practices of wildlife engagement and their conservation implications
- How attitudes to nature recovery and change are formed and negotiated
- Emerging forms of birding, including photography, eBird, sound-based and mindful practices
Conservation Governance
An early role in local government, working on countryside creation in an urban context, first drew my attention to the policy and institutional dimensions of conservation, and to the practical processes through which environmental change is made to happen. This interest deepened through leadership roles in Indonesia, where working closely with government agencies revealed how deeply cultural history and institutional context shape conservation action.
These experiences prompted a longer engagement with conservation governance, including doctoral research and academic work focused on protected areas, policy design, and the evolution of conservation institutions. I have been particularly interested in questions of power, legitimacy, and agency: who or what steers the relationship between society and nature, and how intervention can lead to positive outcomes for both.
Within this theme, I explore:
- The evolution of conservation movements and institutions
- The role of cultural frames and governance systems in shaping outcomes
- How human and non-human actors influence conservation trajectories
Technology and Conservation
Throughout my career, I have engaged with successive waves of technological change and their implications for conservation practice. From early developments in biodiversity informatics to more recent advances in data science and automation, I have been interested in how technology can extend, but also constrain, the ways conservation problems are understood and addressed.
This led to work on biodiversity informatics, the use of digital and online data in conservation research, and the development of new conceptual approaches such as conservation culturomics. Alongside this, I have been drawn to broader ideas about technology as an evolving system, and to questions about how technological design might better align with ecological thinking.
Within this theme, I explore:
- The transformation of biodiversity data into large-scale, decision-relevant systems
- The use of digital and cultural data to understand conservation dynamics
- Conceptual links between systems ecology, technology, and emerging AI futures
Nature Finance and Enterprise
More recently, my work has focused on the challenge of translating ecological potential into economic and institutional forms capable of supporting large-scale recovery. This interest reflects a belief that conservation and rewilding will only reach their potential if new forms of enterprise, investment, and governance are developed alongside ecological practice.
Between 2020 and 2025, this led to intensive work at the intersection of ecology, finance, and technology, including the development of metrics, platforms, and assurance frameworks intended to make ecosystem recovery legible to, and investable within, financial systems. This period deepened my understanding of the complex “systems of systems” that shape the state of nature.
Within this theme, I explore:
- How ecological change can be measured and represented responsibly
- The design of financial and institutional mechanisms for nature recovery
- The risks and opportunities of scaling conservation through markets and enterprise