Prior to joining UBCO, I held a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of Geography, University of Calgary, and a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield. I also previously held teaching fellowships at SOAS University of London, and King’s College London.

My work applies insights from critical geography and interdisciplinary political ecology to the intersection of climate change, forests and development. I investigate how, in whose interest, and with what effects forests get figured and mobilized in climate action broadly defined within a hegemonic neoliberal order, and how projects get assembled, experienced, negotiated and contested in particular places.

I’m interested in widespread efforts to constitute forests as spaces of ‘climate solutions’ through programs such as REDD+, carbon forestry and the so-called natural climate solutions. I situate these programs within critical debates on the neoliberalization of nature, local resource relations, conservation and development, colonial and postcolonial conservation history, and social justice. I have done extensive work on REDD+ and carbon offsetting in the global South, including projects and field research in Nigeria, Ghana and at the international level. I’m developing a new project investigating private finance in West African ‘carbon forests’.

I’m also interested in how forests get constituted as spaces of ‘climate-related risk’ of wildfires, and particularly how notions of risk, enterprise, resilience and security are put to work in this context. I seek to understand the rationalities, practices and technologies by which wildfires are being rendered governable at a time of significant uncertainty. My emerging project here focuses on British Columbia and Alberta in Canada.