PhD student
From ‘zero-tolerance’ to ‘living with the virus’: geographies of containment in the elite political discourse of COVID-19 in New Zealand
Biography
Human geographer interested in geopolitics, critical geographies of health, more-than-human geographies, and science and technology studies.
Career
- 2023 – present: Visiting Scholar at the School of Science in Society, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
- 2023 – present: Intern at the Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, Auckland, New Zealand
- 2021 – present: PhD in Geography, University of Cambridge
- 2020 – 2021: MPhil in Geographical Research, University of Cambridge
- 2017 – 2020: BA in Geography, University of Cambridge
Qualifications
- MPhil in Geographical Research, University of Cambridge
- BA in Geography, University of Cambridge
Awards
- ESRC 1+3 Studentship (2020-2024)
- Phillip Lake Prize for best overall performance, Department of Geography (2019)
- William Vaughan Lewis Prize for part II dissertation, Department of Geography (2020)
- Margaret Anderson Prize (2018, 2019, 2020); Sir Arthur Arnold Scholarship (2018); Ellen McArthur Scholarship (2018, 2019); Angela Dunn-Gardiner Scholarship (2019); Janet Chamberlain Prize (2020); Lady Carlisle Scholarship (2020), Girton College
- Edith Helen Major Travel Award, Girton College (2019)
- David Richards Travel Award, Department of Geography (2019)
Research
My PhD research examines the elite political discourse of the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on the national case study of New Zealand, my work traces the complex entanglements of geopolitics, more-than-human geographies, and scientific expertise that arise as political knowledge about the virus is assembled. In examining these entanglements, this project interrogates what it frames as competing geographies of containment: the multiple tensions between the desire to confine the virus in a range of discursive and material ways, and the constant threat of escape. Methodologically, I am combining discourse analysis of formal political output with embedded qualitative research in the New Zealand science-policy interface. In piecing together how political knowledge about the virus was produced, I hope to reveal insights about the construction of politico-scientific knowledge in times of crisis, the relations between geopolitics and the more-than-human, and how we make sense of infectious diseases and human-viral interactions more broadly.
Teaching
- II Legal Geographies
- IA Geopolitics and Political Geography
- IA Geography’s Shapes: Pasts, Patterns, Prospects
- IB Human Geography Research Training – Discourse Analysis and Coding
External activities
- Co-convenor of Mental Health in Academia peer support group
- Member of Vital Geographies and Geographies of Knowledge research groups
- Associate Fellow of RGS