academic
I'm a senior lecturer in the Geography Department at Canterbury University. I was formerly a lecturer in the
School of Geosciences at Edinburgh University, director of the MScGIS programme, and affiliated with the
Edinburgh Earth Observatory research group (2004-2008). And before that, I finished my PhD at the
University of Maryland in 2004.
Mostly I like thinking about how we represent geographic data, information and knowledge and what we do
or don't represent. My research focuses on issues related to data, information and knowledge representation
for the geosciences, and in particular for processes and dynamic models. While steeped in existing theory or
involved in developing new theory, I take a pragmatic approach to research and work towards testing theories
and methodologies within a computational environment. For example, I have developed a new data model for
representing physical processes as output data from dynamic models and have prototyped it in an Agent Based
Modeling environment for a watershed runoff modeling scenario. More broadly my research interests also include complexity theory, agent based modeling, geosensors,
systems theory, applied process philosophy, ontologies, and wider issues in GIScience.