Priyanshu Thapliyal
In my role, I supported the development of a novel analytical framework and research agenda examining the socio-ecological impacts of climate change, environmental degradation, and green energy infrastructures in the Himalayas. I conducted an extensive literature review to identify key research gaps and co-wrote an academic paper that lays the groundwork for advancing dialogue and collaboration among Himalayan scholars across environmental sciences, anthropology, geography, geology, and the humanities.
The Fellowship provided valuable space to extend my PhD research, which explores how social and ecological transformations driven by urbanisation, infrastructure expansion, and forestry initiatives are being experienced by the local communities and biodiversity in central Himalayas of India. Working alongside and learning from experts during the Fellowship further deepened my understanding of the region’s pressing social and environmental challenges.
Supporting the Earth Fellows project was an immensely rewarding experience. Priyanshu’s work was crucial in consolidating and reviewing interdisciplinary literature on environmental and climate change in the Himalaya. The project has already generated an interdisciplinary article under consideration and is shaping a future British Academy Small Grant proposal. – Dr Rahul Ranjan, Lecturer in Environmental and Climate Justice, School of Geosciences
Simran Sonawalla
As an Earth Fellow on the IMPACT (Institutional Mobilisation Promoted by Actionable Collaborative Teams) project for the Scottish Climate Intelligence Service, I explored the key characteristics, barriers, and drivers of effective cross-service collaboration across Scotland's local councils. Through interviews with local climate change officers, I found that framing climate action as a co-benefit, creating a shared language across service areas such as health, transport, and education, is most effective in establishing professional identities and driving institutional alignment for collective action.
Speaking with local climate change officers has been a genuinely thought-provoking process, deepening my appreciation of the intersections between social psychological research and local climate governance, and how these fields can inform one another. This unique intersection holds great potential to build a long-term perspective on interdisciplinary collaboration, with implications for advancing climate action agendas across Scotland's councils and globally.
Simran's work explores how SCIS can best support multidisciplinary council teams to coordinate on local climate action using ClimateView. Moving forward, these insights will inform the development of resources that build councils' capacity to establish and strengthen these teams in practice. – Sarah Bryant, Impact and Engagement Officer, Scottish Climate Intelligence Service
Tom Harrison
My role was to develop a carbon-accounting model for accidental dwelling fires, covering Scotland and informal settlements in South Africa. I combined household inventory data with fire scenario information from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to produce bottom-up estimates of carbon emissions from damaged home contents. This formed part of a wider International Fire Safety Consortium project mapping the climate impacts of urban, wildland and wildland-urban interface fires.
I developed practical skills in modular Python coding, database management and probabilistic modelling, while learning how fire science connects with carbon accounting. The project showed me that sustainability tools need to translate messy real-world evidence into transparent assumptions, which is directly relevant to my future research and to wider efforts to quantify climate impacts.
Tom and Sarka excelled on a complex challenge—synthesising diverse inputs, delivering a practical testing tool, and documenting it superbly. For my first venture in this domain and with the Business School and ECCI, they’ve provided the perfect building blocks for future work. – Dr Dave Rush, Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering
Yvonne Fondo
As an Earth Fellow, I have laid the groundwork for a register of climate and one health evidence syntheses. Collaborating closely with evidence synthesis experts from UNCOVER and climate specialists from the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute, I finalised the project protocol, developed, tested and refined search strategies, inclusion criteria and a coding framework to categorise the included cross-sector reviews. I also contributed to the long-term sustainability of the register through documentation of workflows and training materials to support future contributors.
Navigating this transdisciplinary fellowship was transformative. I learned that meaningful collaboration requires building a shared language, not just aggregating disparate data streams. Co-designing the coding structure motivated me to cross disciplinary boundaries and embrace a holistic One Health lens. I will now apply my enhanced research skills to translate complex data into accessible tools, driving future evidence-informed policies.
Without Yvonne’s sterling work, we would not have been able to achieve such progress. Yvonne has been our pathfinder: her groundwork has shaped plans for an evidence dashboard and evidence map that will be useful to policy-makers, researchers and students. – Marshall Dozier, College Lead for Library Academic Support (CMVM)
Marie-Louise Wöhrle
In my role as Earth Fellow, I have been researching the social dimensions of environmental biotechnology. I’ve been part of the Horsfall group, who engineer microbes to recover critical metals from different forms of waste, such as lithium-ion batteries. Together with researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, I’ve been running a participatory photography project: working with scientists to interrogate how they understand the links between their work and the world. We’ll be putting the results together into an exhibition! Additionally, I have put together a survey on environmental and microbial values to share with wider engineering biology consortia.
I really enjoyed being an Earth Fellow on this project. It has been very exciting to explore further arts-based research methods and participatory research through the photography project. It has been very cool to get to know microbes from a different perspective (my PhD is on infectious diseases and nature conservation), and I have loved learning more biology and acquiring some wet lab skills.
Marie-Louise brought infectious enthusiasm and a fresh perspective to our work on environmental biotechnology. Her involvement allowed us to explore how scientists think about the natural world and how that is expressed in their work, which in turn will help us to envision more responsible, and effective, ways to use scientific tools to address environmental and climate challenges. – Dr Kyle Parker, Research Fellow, School of Social and Political Science
Sarka Ondrouchova
I was one of two Earth Fellows working on Quantifying Carbon Emissions from Anthropogenic Fires in cooperation with partners from the School of Engineering, Business School and the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute. Alongside Thomas Harrison, I studied the direct and indirect emissions that come from dwelling fires in Scotland and informal settlements in South Africa and co-developed a reusable tool to estimate the total carbon emissions from these fires, which can help policymakers reduce environmental impact and improve safety.
Working in such a varied interdisciplinary team and communicating findings from multiple areas gave me more confidence in teamwork and presentation. However, most of all, quickly grasping the fire science, understanding how government approved emission factors are made, or working with uncertainty were all new to me and will be incredibly useful as a skill in any sustainability-related career.
Working on the Earth Fellow project has been a very useful and enjoyable experience – and the quality of the research has been impressive. The Fellows have been extremely professional and well-organised, and really driven the project forwards. – Prof Matthew Brander, Personal Chair of Carbon Accounting, Business School