我要吃瓜

I have completed my collaborative PhD with the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust. In this PhD, I investiged how small Scottish heritage organisations with social purpose navigate and configure resilience and sustainability in their daily practices and through their uses of creative methods. My PhD was funded by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH).

Prior to starting my PhD, I completed the MSc Heritage at the Centre for Environment, Heritage, and Policy at the 我要吃瓜 in 2018.

I undertook my MSc dissertation in collaboration with National Trust for Scotland: Sustainable Communities; Past, Present and Future. Can Archaeology Resource Management Contribute to Sustainable Island Communities on Canna and Fair Isle?

I also hold degrees in History (MA, University of Amsterdam, MA, University of Sussex) as well as in HR Management (BA, Amsterdam) and have professional experience in heritage consultancy, working with archives, events, and HR Management. Due to my interest in heritage and communities, I have volunteered in community archaeology with Stirling Council including a graveyard recording. I have also enjoyed volunteering for NTS archaeology on the beautiful island of Staffa and have fundraised and coordinated volunteers and events for a local primary school.

I am interested in heritage organisations, resilience, sustainability, regeneration, participation, community empowerment, (digital) ethnographies and creative methods.

My thesis is entitled: 'Assembling Sustainable and Resilient Futures with Small Heritage Organisations: Social Purpose, Creativity and Practices of Care'

This collaborative doctoral research with Glasgow Building Preservation Trust (GBPT) addresses a significant gap in our knowledge and understanding of how sustainability frameworks, policies, and everyday heritage practices intersect in small Scottish heritage organisations with social purpose. In the context of reduced funding and resources, such organisations are exploring how they can re-orientate to fulfil a wider range of public and social benefit agendas in addition to economic and urban regeneration value. I explore GBPT’s everyday heritage practices ethnographically to reveal how small heritage organisations create sustainable and resilient futures while working with social purpose. I consider concepts of sustainability, resilience, creativity, common good, and participation as configured in practice in the context of Scottish policies, strategies and academic scholarship. Qualitative interviews were undertaken in the Scottish heritage sector for a wider perspective on these concepts. Social media research was undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of everyday heritage practices and adaption to the pandemic. Finally, short-term ethnography in Norway created a deeper, comparative understanding of the concepts explored.

The research has important findings that can inform heritage policies and practice offering insights into processes of sustainable development, community resilience and organisational heritage practices. It contributes new knowledge in three key areas: 1) It gives insights into the role of small heritage organisations as curators and narrators of heritage operating at the intersection of national and local policies, funding strategies, and creative heritage practices with communities; 2) It makes visible the intense labour involved in heritage practices as practices of care that address societal challenges in the context of sustainable development and resilience agendas; 3) It contributes to a better understanding of the role of networks of relations as infrastructures of care within sustainable development as a transformative process and its relationship with resilience.

I became an Associate Fellow of Higher Education through the Stirling Framework for Evidencing Learning and Teaching Enhancement in December 2024.

I completed my New to Teaching Short Course at the 我要吃瓜 in 2021.

I am a guest lecturer on the MSc Heritage module: Heritage: critical perspectives (HERPP01). My session is entitled: Heritage futures: sustainability and resilience.

I was a tutor with assessment and feedback BA Social Policy, Alcohol and Society: Policies and Interventions. Leading seminars on Alcohol in Society, Theories of Alcohol Use, Alcohol and Health and Alcohol and Criminal Justice to third- and fourth-year students

In 2023 - 2024, I was a Mentor on the EDI Mentoring Scheme with the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities. In this role, I mentored and supported PhD applicants in applying for SGSAH funding under their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Scheme. My mentorship included providing feedback on the development of their research project, their draft grant proposal and general support of the process.