I am a Senior Lecturer in Architecture, positioned within the School of Natural and Built Environment, a Fellow of the Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action and a registered architect (ARB), integrating professional practice-based experience with academic rigour. My academic foundation is anchored by a multidisciplinary PhD in Sustainable Urban Development (Trinity College Dublin, 2013), providing expertise in systems-level thinking for complex urban challenges. This duality allows for the rigorous translation of theoretical inquiry into applied, research-informed solutions, directly contributing to social equity, sustainability, and high-impact civic engagement in the built environment.

My research is driven by a commitment to creative exploration and co-design methodologies, often involving partnerships with public organisations to translate abstract climate futures into legible, place-based and designed propositions. This inquiry addresses critical, timely challenges in climate urbanism, coastal vulnerability, and regenerative futures. My methodological work advances the application of participatory design, rigorously documenting how different modes of engagement facilitate critical learning and negotiation in complex adaptation projects, such as integrated flood defence and public space design. This translational expertise underpins major international capacity-building grants. My research is directly applied to real-world contexts, including comparative investigation of climate adaptation strategies for Lower Manhattan during my Fulbright Scholarship. My findings are widely disseminated across textual outputs including journal articles, book chapters, and research reports and my work is featured in high-impact, practice-led creative outputs, including exhibitions like 'Staging Seaweed Symbiosis' at the Void Gallery, Derry-Londonderry (2025).

My research is focused on making the global local, using creative co-design methodologies to transform complex climate and ecological data into tangible, spatial commentary and public narratives. I serve as the QUB Lead for the major European Horizon project, JustREACH. Furthermore, I am a Co-Investigator (Co-I) on the AHRC-funded Green Transition Ecosystem, Future Island-Island (FII), which explores regenerative design for island and coastal communities. The tangible outputs of this work were showcased in the Future Observatory: Tools for Transition display at the Design Museum London (2025). This research leadership is complemented by the 2022/23 EPA Fulbright Scholar position at The New School, New York, where I investigated climate adaptation strategies for Lower Manhattan. 

Awards include the 2022/23 EPA Fulbright Scholar fellowship and two QUB Team Teaching Awards (2018 and 2025). My strategic civic contributions leverage professional expertise through secondments to Climate NI (2022) and Belfast City Council (2022) to advance co-design methods for climate resilience. My public-facing work includes delivering a keynote address at the Sustainable Operations and Supply Chain Forum (2020), sharing insights derived from the Public CoLab initiative. Governance roles include serving as a Director on the Board of Sustainable Northern Ireland (2017–2022)  and as an Expert Advisory Panel Member for the National Climate Adaptation Policy for Northern Ireland. Professional quality assurance contributions reflect extensive external service, including acting as External Examiner for the MSc in Sustainable Environments at NUIG (2019–2023)  and providing multiple invited design reviews at international institutions, including Parsons School of Design, New York, University College Dublin and TU Dublin.

My teaching philosophy centres on a high-impact, research-informed design studio pedagogy. I served as the BSc Architecture Programme Director (2019–2022) and currently co-lead the BSc Architecture Stage 2 programme. My foundational pedagogical contribution was the Public CoLab initiative, an intensive, award-winning, cross-disciplinary model (Architecture, Geography and Broadcast Production) that ran from 2018 to 2023 and engaged students with a broad network of external public and not-for-profit organisations. These collaborations were deepened by leveraging two UKRI Impact Accelerator Awards for building strategic partnerships. This work informs the Staging Symbiosis studio, which I now lead, and integrates research from the Future Island-Island (FII) project to explore regenerative design. The success of this research-informed teaching model was formally recognised by a QUB Team Teaching Award in 2025, which highlighted the effectiveness of integrating complex, live research into the core curriculum. The efficacy of this pedagogy is further demonstrated by students winning the World Architecture Festival Design Charrette in 2025 with work developed through the studio.