I am a part-time PhD student based in County Durham.  I’m ‘Artist in Residence’ at Seaham Hall Hotel, as well as a director for a learning-disabled, not-for-profit organisation based in Tyneside.

As a mature student I have previously worked at the University of the Arts London as a Principal Lecturer and Course Director in both the School of Fashion & Management.  More recently I directed an international branding company based in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

My study interests now centre around creating objects born from participants memories through a design-led, practise-based process.  Objects intend to intervene between a surviving human and deceased animal, that may allow me to investigate if a relationship can extend beyond the living through meaningful matter.  Phenomenological research focusses upon how the participants engage with and experience the object within their everyday world, told through storytelling.

Exploration also focusses upon if and how the object may surpass its status and become a thing of aliveness, within the participants reality, space and time.

Ultimately, the aim currently is to assess if the living and the dead can become one ontological unit through the intervention of an object that results in phenomena.

I have recently presented early pilot practice to Death & Culture IV in September 2022.