Love what you do and do what you love.
My inspiration comes from growing up coastal. Being there matters. The smell of the air and the sounds all dig deep into your identity and place-attachment. There’s nothing like the sensation of being attentive to the sea, its various moods along its many coasts also having their own identities. Discovering these became my favorite observations to make. These youthful inspirations became clear curiosities, and from that point, honed in my focus on anything ocean.
I began with science, drawn to its supposed predictability compared to the unpredictability of human behavior. However, I soon realized the undeniable influence of humanity on environmental changes across ocean spaces, shifting my focus to the interplay between these elements. I sought to uncover how the distinct material aspects of ocean environments intertwine with our cultures, discourse, research, and governance decisions, and how our actions and presence reverberate through this dynamic relationship between people and place.
The connections within the human-ocean network are ever-changing and tensions arise from our treating them as the comparatively stable, static, terrestrial systems have conditioned our approach. The ocean’s temporal and material features, the forces that alter them, and the environmental baselines we’ve established in these realms are the invisible connections of the seascape guiding our decisions. Understanding these evolving dynamics continues to be the core of my academic focus.
Me in short: An interdisciplinary education in the marine sciences and the geographies that can be adapted in these spaces to find consilience.