Rachel Carlile
Academic research highlights the relationship between food growing and urban development, and the ways in which green space drives gentrification. The aim of my Fellowship was to begin to explore how this relationship plays out in Edinburgh, and how it is understood and tackled by different actors. I have carried out a policy review, and interviewed various people working on these topics, including food growers, housing justice activists, and councillors and council officers.
Speaking to food and housing justice activists has been an inspiring process and has provoked me to reflect more on the role of academic research in building alliances and contributing to change. I hope that through further research we might be able to gain a longer-term perspective and help contribute to land justice issues in the city.
Rachel’s exploration of food justice and housing justice in Edinburgh has been very enlightening. She found that linking the two themes was not a natural thing to do for actors of the respective housing and food scenes – but asking them the question is perhaps already opening up future possibilities of joint work and alliances. – Dr Isabelle Darmon, Lecturer in Sociology, School of Social and Political science
Beth Pottle
In my role as an Earth Fellow, I have been working on the creation of a systematic map on global polyculture research. The systematic map focuses on two outcomes of polyculture cropping; its impact on crop yield, and its impact on biodiversity. The project has involved working through nearly 9000 research papers in order to build a comprehensive map of global research on this area!
I have loved working on this project! Research on polyculture is fascinating. During my work this year I have read about the huge variation of global polyculture research, whilst developing important research skills at the same time. Importantly, this work has directly influenced my area of focus for my master’s dissertation, and I hope to continue to research this area in the future!
Beth’s work - quarrying through a mountain of rubble to find the kernels of evidence - was indispensable to our project. Building on her excellent work, we hope to turn a sustainable-food theory into an evidenced, workable, hypothesis. – Dr Alfy Gathorne-Hardy, Senior Lecturer, School of Geosciences
Kaia Waxenberg
My Earth Fellows research focused on disentangling the influences of land use and climate change on rivers in the UK. This work linked researchers at the School of Engineering and the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Our interdisciplinary project applied diverse, interdisciplinary research methods to build a picture of past land use policy and river flows in the UK. Through discussions with stakeholders, we identified gaps and opportunities for water management and land use policy.
The Earth Fellows work offered a great opportunity to diversify my research skillset. I independently designed and delivered research interviews and analysed interview transcripts for the first time. As a computational modeller, this social-science approach to addressing research questions was pretty new to me! I also refreshed some rusty mapping skills, which are crucial for environmental research.
We have managed to advance our understanding of the complex interactions between climate change, land use/cover and river flows (specifically extreme flows). There are real possibilities for future collaboration around this topic as highlighted by the interest garnered at the EGU Conference in April; and we plan to develop a joint research proposal between CAHSS and CSE. – Prof Lindsay Beevers, School of Engineering
Freya Buckley
My role focused on the project ‘Sustainability across the seasons: cultural and environmental adaptations to new seasons’. The project seeks to draw together a collaborative network of researchers to explore how sustainability is being impacted by changes in the seasons. I have been compiling a literature review to explore how the seasons are being written and spoken about, as well as organising a networking event to bring together people interested in or working on the seasons. This event was a particular highlight; getting to see people I had brought together discussing in depth their research and share ideas was incredibly rewarding.
Coming from a humanities background rather than previously studying or working in sustainability, I have found the interdisciplinary nature of my fellowship to be a really important part of it. I think my fellowship has shown me sustainability work really benefits when there is a lot of voices from different areas coming to together to share their varying perspectives.
With Freya's networking help and research, the new Seasons and Seasonality Research Network is up and running. We held an inaugural workshop in May and plan to publish an article in the coming year, with grants for new collaborations in progress. – Dr Willow Mullins, Lecturer in Scottish Ethnology, School of Literatures, languages and cultures
Masood Rehman
My role focused on laying the groundwork for an interdisciplinary understanding of aquifer governance. I conducted two literature reviews: one tracing conceptual debates in critical groundwater scholarship, and another focused on case-specific governance dynamics. Alongside this, I identified and profiled key stakeholders; policy actors, technical experts, and local managers, relevant to each setting. These activities helped frame aquifers not just as hydrological entities, but as socially and politically embedded systems shaped by diverse forms of knowledge and authority.
I learned to approach groundwater not just as a resource, but as a site of negotiation shaped by policy, infrastructure, and everyday practice. This perspective has strengthened my ability to navigate complex water governance challenges, an insight that not only deepens my PhD research but is directly transferable to roles in sustainability, resource management, and environmental consultancy.
Nick Wray
My role in our project was to carry out the statistical analysis of the flow, meteorological and climate change data which we were using in our investigations into mapping legislative and regulatory changes of land use practice onto river flow changes in Scotland and England. My PhD research had already been in this area, so I was able to modify my research techniques and analytical programs relatively easily to deal with the issues thrown up by our Earth Fellows project.
I needed to write code to identify the flow from single catchments which was produced solely by precipitation within that catchment and was not brought in from further upstream. It sounds like a straightforward task, but in fact was very challenging, entailing the best estimation of missing data elements and use of spatial geometry functions in R.
We have managed to advance our understanding of the complex interactions between climate change, land use/cover and river flows (specifically extreme flows). There are real possibilities for future collaboration around this topic as highlighted by the interest garnered at the EGU Conference in April; and we plan to develop a joint research proposal between CAHSS and CSE. – Prof Lindsay Beevers, School of Engineering