My research interests centre of the use of digital representations of landscape, at the planning scale. This frequently involves the use of Geographic Information Science (GIS) and statistics to address the many challenges facing our landscapes. I have a particular interest in exploring inequalities in greenspace access, mapping land cover and in geographic definitions of the Rural-Urban divide.

The use of mobile technology forms an important strand of my research. I am interested in mapping using GPS but also in automated extraction from social media and other online data (such as Flickr and Twitter) in order to inform about the use and values of urban greenspace.

I am currently involved in the Improving Wellbeing through Urban Nature (IWUN) project, led by Dr Anna Jorgensen within the Department and funded by NERC through the Valuing Nature network. I am working on Work Package 1 which seeks to investigate the statistical relationships between health inequality, deprivation and greenspace in Sheffield using a range of secondary data (see funded research below).

I am a co-author on the Rural-Urban Classification which is the official statistic used to distinguish rural and urban areas in England and Wales. The work identified and characterised physical settlements in order to generate a typology of settlement form (such as ‘village,’ ‘town’ or ‘urban fringe’).

I am interested in vague and fuzzy geographic objects. Despite the widespread acknowledgment that people will frequently have varying opinions relating to spatial boundaries and categorization, most digital representations treat such continuous spatial objects as discrete objects. My doctoral studies were concerned with formulating vague definitions of place through the extraction of differing opinions held on the internet. As such, it generated vague and probabilistic data for both neighbourhood boundaries and settlement classifications. I am interested in applying these concepts within landscape planning (for example using vague boundaries within Landscape Character Assessment).

• Benefits of urban plants as determined by plant species choice
• Gardens / Gardening for health and well-being
• Climate change and urban plants
• Green walls and building insulation 
• Landscape plants and urban water management

Developing more sustainable landscape management techniques is a key driver in much of my research, and I have been involved in a number of projects investigating more efficient use of resources (water, organic waste streams as soil amendments, alternative growing media and energy).

I led a DEFRA LINK project - Efficient use of water in horticulture which proposed a 2/3 reduction in water use during the production of ornamental plants. This project involved 14 partner organizations and was rated 9/10 by DEFRA – one of the highest-ranking scores at the time.

I have also more recently conducted projects evaluating the use of grey water for landscape applications. I work closely with industry partners, for example, the Horticultural Trades Association on the ‘carbon footprint’ of plant production and maintenance; and the Royal Horticultural Society on maximizing invertebrate biodiversity through the appropriate use of garden ornamentals.

As a landscape horticulturalist, I also am very keen to understand more about how people relate to the landscape and what sorts of plant-based designs provide strong resonance with the public and why?

I am particularly interested in the relationship between plants, ‘naturalistic’ landscapes and human well-being. As such I have worked on a number of consultations with stakeholders in this field, including MIND, the horticultural therapy charity THRIVE, The Royal Neurological Hospital and the Landscape Institute.

Recent research activity has focused on three areas which include: sustainable approaches to housing design and specification of landscape materials, cemetery design and management and finally the application of digital technologies in design education. The first two may not immediately appear related but have a loose connection in terms of landscape and sustainability. Cemetery research specifically focuses on the Natural Burial movement and what we can learn about society from these new landscapes of death and disposal. In 2007 I was awarded a three-year research grant (300K) from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to investigate the cultural and social implications of natural burial.

The housing research seeks to broaden our understanding of how buildings and their environment may be thought of in a more integrated manner in order to improve their sustainable profile.

The final area of interest, digital technologies and landscape perception and education explore the role of computers in enabling designers and users to experience and evaluate designs which have yet to be realised.

My research activity is strongly interdisciplinary, focusing on the interface between ecology, design and horticulture in urban green space and built development, and has an active interaction with industry, national agencies, and local community groups. My research falls into four major areas:

• development of sustainable and innovative vegetation and planting design techniques
• the vegetation, planting and ecology of green roof systems
• rain Gardens and other landscape rainwater management features; d) long-term ecological monitoring

• Aesthetics, colour and human reactions to urban green infrastructure (UGI)
• Futureproofing places for climate resilience, biodiversity and human health and wellbeing
• Co-creating nature-based solutions (NBS) in deprived diverse places
• Connecting children with nature through co-creating NBS
• Green social prescribing: Opportunities, challenges, and environmental co-benefits

I use integrative inter-disciplinary approaches drawn from environmental psychology, urban ecology, sociology and cultural geography. As a landscape architect I believe strongly in the importance of design for diverse urban publics rather than for professional elites, and aim to reconcile human aesthetic preferences, well-being and ecological objectives.

I am interested in understanding how people experience, interact with and adapt urban spaces and residential environments. This serves as a foundation for exploring how design actions can encourage positive connections between people and these places that they routinely inhabit and use.

I arrived in Sheffield in 2008 to study Landscape Architecture with Planning and graduated three years later with BA 1st Class (Hons), while also receiving the Wardell Armstrong and Y+H Landscape Institute Prizes. This provided the foundations for my time spent in practice, at Applied Landscape Design. I returned to Sheffield in 2012 to complete my Master of Landscape Architecture during which I time I explored the idea of pursuing research. I formulated a supervisory team comprising Dr. Kevin Thwaites (Landscape) and Dr. Megan Freeth (Psychology) with a focus towards using mobile eye-tracking to understand how people visually engage aspects of urban streets. I was successfully awarded Economic and Social Research Council funding to undertake a 1+3 Pathway Development Scholarship commencing with a MA in Landscape Research (Distinction), during which I received the IAPS Young Researchers Award. The following four years were spent undertaking my PhD (What you lookin’ at? Understanding visual engagement with urban street edges) and in 2018 I become a Lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture. Today, I co-lead the Socio-spatial Urbanism Unit (SsUU), an interdisciplinary group of academic researchers, teachers and practitioners exploring new agendas of thinking and theoretical development focused on social understandings of urban open spaces. This unit acts as a foundation for my research and related teaching practice – Socio-spatial Urbanism Unit.

My research interests and activities focus on two main themes, which are integrated into approaches to research-led-teaching: the theory and philosophy of urban landscape design and their impact on the intellectual underpinning and conceptual development of design processes and spatial languages; socially sustainable approaches to planning and design in urban open spaces, particularly how spatial and experiential dimensions converge to influence psychological health and well-being.

These general areas of interest converge in Experiential Landscape and Socially Restorative Urbanism, a research stream concerned with applying an integrated approach to human-environment relations to place making in urban open space settings. Along with Dr James Simpson, I lead the Socio-Spatial Urbanism Unit.