About

I’m an ethnographic researcher, photographer and filmmaker who uses creative methods to understand how global issues affect local communities and ecologies. In particular, my work focuses on the possible Anthropocene presents and futures of rural coastscapes in the UK (especially Scotland) and Japan. To do this, I attend to the ways that immersion in and exposure to more-than-human and elemental rhythms shape people’s relationships with the world around them.

My doctoral research examined the emerging seaweed industry on the west coast of Scotland, asking what happens and what matters when crop cultivation is immersed in the sea for the first time. Alongside this, I explored the intertwined histories of photography, seaweed, science and social anthropology to inform my visual practice.

Previous research projects have taken me on fishing boats in Japan, to dairy farms in Ireland, to cattle auctions in North Yorkshire and on outings with birdwatchers.

I speak advanced Japanese, have worked as a project manager in the charity sector (refugees/forced migration/higher education) and as an educator in schools in Japan and universities in the UK. I’ve lived in Japan, Malaysia and Thailand, spent a significant amount of time in Myanmar and travelled solo overland from Japan to the UK following the old Silk Road, via Central Asia and Iran. I recently cycled the length of Japan, from Cape Sata in Kagoshima to Cape Soya in Hokkaido.

I am currently based in Manchester, UK.

Qualifications

  • PhD Social Anthropology with Visual Media (2025), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

    Thesis: Seaweed Saves the World? A tidalanalysis of seaweed cultivation on the west coast of Scotland

  • MA Anthropological Research, distinction (2019), funded by AHRC

    Dissertation: “That Time is Coming”: Speculative futures in depopulating rural Japan

  • MA Visual Anthropology, distinction (2017)

    Dissertation film: 蝉の声・The Sound of Cicadas

All at the prestigious Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology (GCVA), University of Manchester.

I also hold a BA in History with first class honours (2006) from the University of Kent, and have completed a short course in Narrative Non-Fiction Writing (2015) at City University, London.