Although my professional experience is in social and environmental policy, I maintain an artistic practice where I work with mixed media, including documentary photography and sound, mainly focused on London, where I’m based. My work generally takes a systems approach and explores how people experience and relate to physical space and the natural world, with a particular focus on urban environments, environmental change, mental wellbeing and questions of access and inclusion. Drawing on my own experiences and reflections on how I engage with the environment around me, I am especially interested in how sensory approaches, particularly sound and image, can open up alternative ways of engaging with nature. Looking at natural history, social context and lived experience, I try to work in a way that invites reflection and dialogue.

My recent projects examine species, cultural practices and environments under pressure. Fly Over My City, developed in collaboration with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, explores the lives of common swifts, the built environment and the challenges of coexisting with urban wildlife. The project incorporates a soundscape to evoke the presence of a migratory species that is often heard but not so easily seen. In Manifestations: Lion Dance and I, exhibited in London in 2023, I documented a traditional Cantonese lion dance troupe, combining image and sound, including interviews, to explore rhythm, movement and the transmission of cultural knowledge within a Cantonese-British community.

Alongside this, I have developed work exploring how people in London relate to green spaces, with a growing interest in equality of access to nature in the city. This work is informed by my experience in environmental policy and engagement with ethnic minority networks, and responds to persistent misconceptions about who participates in and values the environment.

I hold degrees in documentary photography, biological sciences, and biodiversity and taxonomy. I worked for 15 years as a policy advisor in the UK government until 2025. In 2015 was awarded a British Empire Medal for my work on gender equality. I am a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, who I collaborated with in 2019 on the Framed Fish Project.

Exhibitions

• May-July 2024 Fly Over My City, exhibit at Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford
• September and October 2023 Manifestations: Lion Dance and I, a self-curated mixed media two-day installation and talk in collaboration with Tang’s Pak Mei and Celestial Peach at the Charing Cross Library, London
• June 2023 Fly Over My City, a mixed media exhibition as part of UAL graduation show at Free Range, London

Education

• 2021-2023 MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography (Distinction) – London College of Communication, University of the Arts London
• 2005-2006 MSc Advanced Methods in Taxonomy and Biodiversity – Imperial College London
• 2001-2004 BA Biological Sciences – Merton College, University of Oxford

Awards

• 2015 Medallist of the Order of the British Empire for services to gender equality – interviewed in The Guardian