Who am I?

I'm a PhD student (funded by the Thomas Holloway Scholarship) at the geography department at Royal Holloway, University of London. I started ar RHUL as an undergraduate in 2004 after the fundraising company I worked for went bust. My orginal motivation to study at university was to use development studies as a platform into charity work. Instead, I found some of the answers that I didn't know I was looking for in cultural geography.

In 2008-9 I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease after a lengthy period of uncertainty. The diagnosis came as a big relief, and meant that I could live a largely 'normal' life again.

Research areas:

• Geographies of commodities, ethical consumption, value chain analyses
• Postcolonial and Marxist geographies
• White studies
• Critical race theory
• Feminist approaches to the body and eating
• Radical food studies

Experience:

Research:

• My undergraduate dissertation on the performance of femininity at the 1938 Glasgow Exhibition resulted from archival research undertaken in the special collections of the Mitchell Library.
• I engaged in a range of interview strategies and forms of participant observation for my MA dissertation on the contestation of place and the performance of passion and suffering by face to face charity fundraisers.
• My PhD on the corporeal work of consumer boycott/ advocacy movements draws from in depth interviews and oral histories as well as archival reasearch. I perform discourse analysis and use visual methodologies to make meaning from my sources.

Teaching:

• Tutorials for the 2nd year Cultural Geographies course at RHUL (2011-12)
• Demonstrating for the 2nd year Human Geography Methods.
• Experience marking undergraduate papers.
• Taking INSTIL.

Qualifications and awards:

• Human Geography BA (Ist Class Hons, RHUL)
• Cultural Geography MA (Distinction, RHUL)
• 1st Place Undergraduate Dissertation of the Year for the Women & Geography Research Group of the RGS (2007)
• Fully funded PhD (fees and annual stipend) Exeter (2009-2012, declined)
• Thomas Holloway Scholarship (fees and annual stipend) RHUL (2009-2012)