I am an interdisciplinary scholar in art studies. My work is ethnographic and is concerned with understanding practice in a way that does not designate the work of art and artists as discrete, but melded in continuity with other professional and disciplinary fields. My position foregrounds researching with rather than about; and is concerned with mundane occupational tans-actions and how knowing how work takes place at an intimate relational level can help us understand and re-shape our common tropes of collaboration, participation and engagement. To this end my ethnography gives attention to the continuity and situatedness of our relations beyond speech. To do so I write with classical pragmatism – with focus on the work of John Dewey and contemporary readings of his work that privilege the body. To date this work has been situated within the field of planning, where the research has contributed to rural and urban studies as well as visual arts practice. I am currently completing a Routledge monograph that introduces ‘art worlding’ as a material practice of knowing urban and rural relations. And I am also developing a new research theme in cultural organisation and management. Before academic research I contributed to visual arts development in the UK in various roles as an editor, commissioner-curator, evaluator, organiser and consultant. I have been a visiting fellow at the Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway and Akademie Schloss Solitude, in Stuttgart. I hold a BA in Fine Art (Drawing and Painting) from Duncan of Jordanstone of Art in Dundee, an MSc in Development Studies from University of Manchester and PhD in Planning and Landscape from Manchester Architecture Research Group, University of Manchester, funded by the Sustainable Consumption Institute (UoM).

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