My teaching varies from year to year. Currently, I teach, or contribute to the teaching of, the following courses:

• Landscape Architecture (MA, MLA)
  Landscape Theories: Critical Zones (1st year, Semester 1)
  and contributions to Landscape Architecture Theory 2B (2nd year, Semester 2) and the Terrain & Ecologies design studio (3rd year MA, Semester 1 & 1st year MLA, Semester 2)
   
• MSc in Architecture, Landscape and Environment
  Exploring Situated Methods 2: Independent Field Lab (Semester 2)
  and contributions to Exploring Situated Methods 1:Site-specific Field Lab (Semester 1); Cultural Landscapes Colloquium (Semester 1); and Situated Research Project (Summer Period: project supervision)

My overarching research interest is the geological record of the production of landscape: what can the sediments, soils, and landforms in inhabited landscapes reveal about the historical interaction between the mode of production in human societies, non-human lifeforms, and geological processes? Within this theme, I am especially interested in the long-term evolution of tropical landscapes; the formation, sediments, and habitation history of caves; coastal landscape change, high-resolution stratigraphy at archaeological sites, the taphonomy (burial history) of human remains, and, increasingly, the geology of capitalism, labour, and class struggle.  

In my earlier work at Stirling, I analysed sediments, soils, and landforms from archaeological sites to reconstruct landscape evolution, past human practices of inhabitation, and the interplay between human socioecological practices (e.g., forest foraging, subsistence farming) and geomorphic processes. Most of my work was on landscapes in the Indian Ocean littoral (Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Kenya), on routes of human migration and sociocultural interaction over the past 120,000 years, across phases of climate and sea-level change and socioecological transformations. In addition, I worked on the question of the emergence and landscape dynamics of early settlements in Iran's arid Central Plateau 8–7000 years ago. With colleagues from Scotland and abroad, we analysed sediments and soils from caves (Sri Lanka, Zanzibar, Pemba, eastern Kenya), coastal settlements (Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar), early human burial sites (Kenya), and settlement mounts – long-term accumulations of the residue of prehistoric village life – in Iran (Tepe Sialk, Tepe Ghabristan). Integrated with analyses of material culture and human, animal, and plant remains, and various geochronological records and proxies of past climate and ecological conditions by other colleagues, this work informs new understandings of the response of tropical landscapes to climate change and human habitation; the ecological context of technological change in early prehistory (e.g., microlithic industries in Sri Lanka, the transition from Mid- to Late Stone Age in East Africa); the taphonomy (burial history) of human remains and the emergence of ritual practices (e.g., an 80,000 years-old child burial in East Africa); the cycles of material production and discard in early villages, and the interaction of these villages with their wider landscape dynamics (e.g., Sialk and Ghabristan, Iran); and the ways human settlement and socieoeconomic and politcal shifts (integration to transoceanic trade networks) drove the transformation of island landscapes (e.g., Zanzibar). It also feeds on the wider discussion on the formation and geological evolution of cave systems (e.g., Zanzibar, Kenya, Sri Lanka).    

At the other end of the temporal spectrum, I am developing an interest in the geology of early capitalism in Scotland: the geological record of landscape transformation over the last 400 years, driven by capitalist agriculture (enclosure, evictions, commodity farming), fossil-fuel extraction, urbanisation, industrialisation, and class struggle. This is a theme I am keen to develop more systematically in the coming years.