travel

I have had the opportunity to travel in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Southern Africa, backpacking, volunteering on game reserves, and as a language student. I took a year out before starting my first degree at St Andrews. During the year I travelled in Morocco where I spent some time learning Arabic, volunteered on a game reserve in Botswana, and travelled by rail through Turkey and Eastern Europe.

I worked on a game reserve again, this time in South Africa, during the summer of 2004. After studying Arabic for a year at St Andrews, I spent some as an langauge student in Cairo, Egypt during the summer of 2005. I have also visited the US on several ocassions, to visit friends and to work on a summer education program run by the American Youth Foundation.

books

I read both fiction and non-fiction whenever I find time. I often read non-fiction related to food politics, but also read more widely on environmental and sustainability issues. I enjoy reading fiction, and while I have grown out of an earlier fascination with travel literature, I still like to read novels set in new places.

music

I enjoy both listening to and playing music. I've been playing the piano since I was young, and also played the saxophone in a windband whilst at secondary school. More recently, I have been teaching myself to play acoustic guitar.

web design

I have recently been developing my knowledge of web design, teaching myself to build web pages (using html and css) and using blogging software.

I have used wordpress to develop a website for my current masters research project. The site includes a series of pages introducing the research, a user-only area for participants, and a blog which follows local food issues in the media and current affairs. The site currently averages 1,500 page views each month. You can explore the website here, or click the screen shot above.

I have also built this personal website myself, in order to practice writing html and css from scratch. The pages on this website all validate as conforming to the world wide web consortium's strict html 4.01 and css standards.

hiking and biking

I love spending time outdoors, and particularly enjoy hiking and mountain biking. As a child, we spent holidays in walking in the Lake District and Scotland. More recently, I had the opportunity to lead groups of 11-13 year olds on hike and canoe trips while working with the American Youth Foundation.