I trained as an anthropologist in UCL with Kathy Homewood, and has worked previously in the Geography Departments of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the GDI at Manchester and SIID at the University of Sheffield, which I co-directed with Dorothea Kleine. I have worked on different aspects of conservation social science for some time, covering the social impacts of conservation policy, global overviews of eviction from protected areas, continental wide examinations of the work of conservation NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa, and the work of media and celebrity in conservation and development. My books include Fortress Conservation, Nature Unbound (with Rosaleen Duffy and Jim Igoe), Celebrity Advocacy and International Development, Celebrity and the Environment, and I have recently published (with Christine Noe) Prosperity in Rural Africa? and (with Stefano Ponte and Christine Noe) Contested Sustainability. I serve on the board of the Mozambican conservation and development NGO ‘Micaia’. I have recently published the first two books ‘Samti’ books, from a fictional trilogy for middle grade readers with APE Network in Dar es Salaam.