I’m a cultural geographer and interactive narrative designer whose research and creative practice explores how people engage with place through playful, site-specific, experimental and/or immersive media forms.
I am currently working as a Research Associate at the Digital Cultures Research Centre, based in the Pervasive Media Studio at
Watershed, a digital creativity centre in central Bristol.
I recently completed a
practice-based PhD project at Royal
Holloway, supervised between Geography and Media Arts, which involved
independently making and testing location-based games in my home district of
Canterbury and more widely in East Kent. This method sought to understand the
potential of location-based game development and play for discovering, sharing
and engaging purposefully with the wide-ranging narratives through which this
area is imagined, lived, performed and contested today.
This project led to the
publication of my paper Location-Based
Games as Platforms for Site-Specific Story Mapping in the LivingMaps Review
in 2021 and has also produced several presented conference papers over the
course of my PhD (see my Portfolio page for
details).
Creative works developed during
my PhD have included The
Timekeeper's Return, a mixed-reality treasure hunt in Canterbury's Cathedral
Quarter played using QR codes; Canterbury
in 3 Words, a participatory storytelling platform and location-based
treasure hunt played using the what3words app; and The
Gates to Dreamland, a locative audiowalk game based around Margate's
Dreamland amusement park, made as part of A Different LENS (a collaborative
story-mapping project funded by Arts Council England, Kent County Council and
Margate NOW).
The development of these projects
followed prior professional experience in the area of pervasive media art and
games, having worked with four times BAFTA-nominated interactive arts
organisation Blast
Theory before beginning my PhD.
In parallel with my PhD research,
I have had a longstanding interest in the cultural geographies of digital game
environments; in particular how a sense of place can be crafted in their hybrid
physical and digitally-rendered landscapes. Having previously undertaken
research on 'walking simulator' video games, I'm interested in how we might
make sense of the relationships between practices of game design and play and
the experiences that result.
These research interests stem
back to a broader fascination with psychogeography, particularly how different
kinds of practices might engage with elements of a place’s cultural
significance. To me, this is a creative challenge as well as an academic one,
hence why I’ve long been interested in research that bridges between
disciplines, reaches beyond the academy and explores creative methods of
inquiry.
During my time at Royal Holloway,
I was an active member of the StoryFutures
Creative Cluster network, acting as an expert
consultant for SMEs by sharing insights on game design, location and
environment in digital narrative experiences. This notably led to my
involvement as a writer, narrative designer and consultant for Interrobang?!,
a theatre-meets-online gaming experience developed by immersive theatre company
Gideon Reeling.
Alongside my creative practice
and research activities, I have taught as a visiting lecturer on Digital
Storytelling for undergraduates in the Media Arts department at Royal Holloway. This involved designing a bespoke lecture
series on location-based games. I have also had further teaching roles as a
workshop leader on Digital Methods and Ethnography for Geography Masters
students and as a teaching assistant on Geographical Techniques for Geography
undergraduates. During my PhD, I passed RHUL's Programme in Skills of Teaching
to Inspire Learning (inSTIL) programme with a commendation, conferring
Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.
I am an active member of the Digital Geographies Research Group
(DGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British
Geographers), where I sit on the committee. Most recently in my work with the DGRG,
I developed the group’s YouTube
channel and have curated and contributed to their Work
in Progress YouTube series. I also organised DGRG-sponsored sessions at the
RGS-IBG Annual International Conference in 2018 and 2019, as well as a
sponsored session at the online RGS-IBG Postgraduate Forum Mid-term Conference
in 2021 and a symposium on Digital Games and VR in July 2019.
Outside of my professional life,
I am a self-taught musician, avid player of story- and exploration-rich video
games, prolific geocacher and lover of walking and wildflowers. I campaign
regularly on environmental issues in my local area in East Kent.
