About

Hello

I'm a designer and Science and Technology Studies researcher, and community member from the Orkney isles, Scotland and based in Vienna, Austria. I'm exploring how we support place-based ways of life through my research practice, critical making, and direct community work.

Having grown up in Orkney, I understand deeply how connection to place (and the infrastructures that support us living there) shapes what's possible for a community. My applied work in community energy has taught me how communities negotiate working together to improve local ways of life. Before beginning my PhD in Technosciences, Materiality and Digital Cultures, I led the technical team at Community Energy Scotland, supporting communities across Scotland in developing community-led energy projects, and actively participating in the co-production processes through which communities negotiate energy technologies and digital tools within the context of their relationship with place.

My MSc in Data, Inequality and Society (Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh) dissertation examined the possibilities and limits of community data trusts in small, place-based communities by testing a functioning one with communities in the islands of Hoy and Walls. I found that the tensions digital tools surface are often as revealing as what they enable.

Previous work

Before Community Energy Scotland, I spent three years at Superflux contributing to and leading public-facing interventions using design fiction, material artefacts, and speculative research methods. Projects engaged publics with questions about technology, ethics, power, and more-than-human relations, spanning Singapore (ArtScience Museum), Dubai (Museum of the Future), Glasgow (COP26), Vienna (MAK), and Venice (Biennale Architettura).

Education