Staff Research Profiles

I am a forester and landscape architect, Senior Research Fellow and a director of the OPENspace research centre. My background lies in landscape aesthetics, forest landscape planning and design, outdoor recreation design and landscape ecology.

Formerly, I was Chief Landscape Architect to the British Forestry Commission and involved in policy, research commissioning and training. I combine research with an active design practice focussing on forest landscape design, recreation design and visual impact assessment.

In OPENspace I have been active in developing the strategic direction of the unit and also leading a number of research projects for clients such as the Forestry Commission and English Nature. I am also active internationally, involved in EU funded COST Actions, such E33, Forest Recreation and Nature Tourism, of which I am the Chair and E39, Forests, Trees and Human Health and Wellbing. I am also Professor of landscape architecture at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu Estonia and a visiting lecturer at universities in Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and St Petersburg. I was also part of a British Council funded environmental planning project at Lake Baikal in Siberia.

Ongoing UK research work on the application of the Disability Discrimination Act to Scottish forests and Cultural Landscape Values in Rural Latvia funded by a British Academy grant. I am involved in a multinational project called PLUREL, funded under the 6th European Framework of Research, looking at urban, periurban and rural land use change.

OPENspace

ESALA_eca, Landscape Architecture