Research
Research interests
- Food Geographies
- Political Ecology
- Science and Technology Studies
- More-than-Human Geography
- Nature Recovery
Current research
Theo's research fits under three broad themes:
1. Food System Resilience
At Southampton, Theo is currently a post-doctoral research fellow working alongside Professor Emma Roe on the TRISoMe Chicken project (Towards Resilient Industrial Social Metabolic Relations). The project goal is to develop principles for improving UK food system resilience, through co-produced knowledge, intervention and engagement, by researchers, industry stakeholders and consumers.
For the project, Theo is researching the benefits and harms of an industrialised food system to communities of humans, animals, microbes, and the environment. Theo is currently investigating the impact of chicken feed, flesh, and farms on different human and more-than-human communities. This involves interviews with a range of stakeholders, including soy feed producers, traders, and purchasers, poultry scientists, and environmental NGOs.
He has published this work in The Conversation.
2. The Politics of UK Nature Recovery
Theo's PhD research investigated the politics of nature restoration, rewilding and reforestation in the Scottish Highlands. Drawing upon a mixture of ethnographic and interview techniques, his research examined how different ecologies are measured using a range of metrics and technologies, and how the forms of environmental data generated are used to justify or reject different ways of restoring nature. This research uncovered how certain ecologies are made financially and socially valuable - for the benefit of some at the expense of others.
As part of this work, he has published about the knowledge politics of emerging technologies used for carbon measurement and verification, such as drones, laser scanners and remote sensors, also in Environmental Science and Policy. Theo has developed the concept of 'technical wildness' to describe the role that digital technologies have in shaping the practices and politics of rewilding. A paper developing this concept has been published in People and Nature.
Throughout his work on nature recovery, Theo centres a commitment to multispecies justice, in which governance is directed towards supporting communities of humans, animals, and other non-human species. He has published about multispecies justice in Environmental Science and Policy and Environmental Humanities.
He produced Occlusion, an experimental art-science film about forest measurement, with artist-filmmaker Dr. Stephen Cornford. Occlusion investigates the visual politics of carbon removal. Filming took place in March and April 2025 and it is currently under review at several leading film festivals. The film is available on request.
3. Carbon Finance
Alongside Dr. George Cusworth, Theo has been developing a new conceptual vocabulary, under the heading of ‘environmental performativity’. Theo and George are investigating the different types of ‘performances’ used to legitimise different environmental governance schemes, and the different ‘performative’ outcomes ushered in by different environmental measurement schemes. This work highlights the political power that forms of science, measurement, and representation hold in securing trust for different approaches to governing nature. The first paper from this research collaboration is published in Progress in Environmental Geography.
Building on the conceputal piece on progress, Theo and George published an analytical paper examining the environmental performativity of the Woodland Carbon Code, the UK's forest carbon accreditation system.
Building from his PhD research into the UK carbon market, Theo has been working alongside Dr. Sohus zu Ermgassen and a team of ecologists and economists based at the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery to develop an alternative approach to nature finance. This research reviews the problems with nature markets (biodiversity and carbon offsetting markets), researches alternative mechanisms for scaling up finance available for conservation and nature recovery, and outlines which types of nature recovery projects deliver intersectional social and ecological benefits. The first publication, which sets a vision for ‘Reimagining Nature Finance’, is currently under review.