Lancaster Environment Centre

My first research area was agricultural geography. I have studied recent structural changes in farming focussing on its reorganisation through the amalgamation of farms, the decline of traditional landed estates, the growth of public landownership, and the impact of public and private institutions on individual farmers. Work on farm diversification, particularly farm tourism, extended this area of research, as did the ESRC-funded research on managers and managerialism in large farms. Themes common to these studies include the need to conceptualise the links between technical change and the wider socio-economic environment, and the study of the diffusion of innovations. I have evaluated various models of rural change such as regulation theory and post-productivism, and the complex interaction of structural changes and individual farmers' decision-making and strategies. Some more technical research has focused on problems in agricultural regionalisation and data sources.

The agricultural theme has expanded into related areas such as rural labour markets (particularly the growth of part-time work, multiple job-holding and gender differences in rural employment), rural housing markets and migration (particularly second homes), and the development of rural tourism and issues of food chains and food markets in rural areas. These have been the subject of my participation in several recent EU-funded studies.

Rural tourism and leisure has become a major focus for my more recent research, including a collaborative study on the cultural aspects of the countryside (the idea of rurality and cultural conflicts), and more micro-scale work on farm tourism and family structures. The most recent EU-funded project deals with integrated tourism and how issues of sustainable development and community welfare can be linked to tourism developments.

My rural research has focused on the structural changes in rural economies, focusing on two themes. The first is the ways in which macro (often economic) forces and micro (often social and personal factors) interact to create the varied and dynamic rural economies we see around us. The second is exploring how rural dynamics can be theorised, particularly in terms of the inter-relationships between political action and policies, and the actions of individuals, firms and agencies. This has taken the form of seeing how one can implement in a practical sense the ideas and research perspectives contained in structuration theory, actor-network theory and rural governance as tools for researching rural changes.

The final area of research is into the pedagogy of geography in higher education. I have studied and published on: students’ careers and personal development; the links between the geography curriculum and careers; the effects of lecture attendance on performance; the vocationalism of GIS modules; students as knowledge transferors; and disability and geography courses. As a teacher myself, I have explored the use of different styles of lecturing; self-guided and other types of field trail; distance-learning; problem solving and problem-based learning; and virtual fieldwork. I am working with the University for Development Studies in Ghana on a British Council project on enhancing research and teaching capacity.

In 2006 the Royal Geographical Society awarded me the Taylor and Francis Award for “excellence in the promotion of teaching and learning in higher education”. I was a member of the Institute for Learning and Teaching and am now a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.