Profile

My dad’s job meant we travelled a lot when I was a kid. I was born in Kenya and went to school in Oman, Kent, Qatar and Liverpool (two of those are much more exotic than the other two!) I liked Liverpool so much that I stayed there to go to university, and liked the university so much that I stayed on to do a masters. After that, I decided that I should try something different, so I moved to Manchester 11 years ago.

I live with my partner who is also a lecturer and my cat who isn’t but thinks he’s the cleverest person in the house. Our back garden is small but full of fruit, veggies and herbs in big pots. We are at war with a local squirrel who keeps stealing our plums!

I love baking, making jam from the fruit that I grow, and knitting wonky jumpers.

I am a lecturer in the Geography department at the University of Manchester. During term time I teach students about flooding, rivers, landslides, and peat bogs. I also take students to the Pyrenees mountains every Easter to teach them about geography in Spain.

The rest of the time, I study peat bogs. These are soggy areas of land covered in rich dark soils made of dead plants over thousands of years. Because bogs are so wet, the dead plants don’t rot away. The dead plants contain lots of carbon which is locked away rather than being released into the atmosphere. So as bogs grow, they play an important role in the carbon cycle. When it rains on bogs, water slowly moves through the landscape.

In the UK, many of our bogs have been damaged by pollution, climate change, fire and people not looking after them properly. A lot of the plants die so bogs stop growing and the peat gets washed away. When they are damaged, they stop storing carbon and release it into the atmosphere. If there are no plants to get in the way, rainwater flows really quickly over bogs. This has been blamed for some of the flooding we’ve seen in the UK over the last few years.

Over the last 15 years or so, we have been working hard to restore peat bogs by planting grass and moss. These new plants protect the peat’s surface and stop it from washing away. Over time, we hope that the bogs will start growing again. The new plants also slow the flow of water across the peat’s surface when it rains. I study how peat bog restoration can help stop flooding.

I hate mornings! Unless I absolutely have to, I will go into work a bit later in the morning than other people might (about 10-ish), but then I work later into the evening.

During term time, my day will probably revolve around teaching. I could be giving a lecture to up to 200 students or I might meet with a student on their own to talk about their coursework. I’m in charge of our Geography with Professional Placement degree programme, which gives our students the chance to spend a year getting work experience before they finish their degree. So I also spend a lot of time helping students to find a work placement.

When I’m not teaching, I work on my research projects. My main project looks at how we can best restore peat bogs to reduce flooding. I measure stream flow and rainfall to try to understand how they are linked together, and how different types of restoration can change the amount of water flowing through streams. Some of these measurements are taken by hand using rulers and some are taken using special sensors that have to be downloaded every couple of months. Some of the sensors are connected to the internet, so I don’t even have to leave the comfort of my cosy office to get my data! I am also interested in how fire damages peat bogs. For this I collect soil and water samples and take them back to the lab to look for pollutants.