Biography
Angie has a PhD and BSc (hons) in Geography, and an MSc in Marine Resource Management. Prior to joining the team at Keele, she spent 10 years working in local government. Her first job was as a Countryside Ranger looking after numerous sites and managing volunteer parties. From here she moved into the field of Local Agenda 21 and became a Senior Sustainability Officer working on a wide portfolio of projects from policy creation and planning through to community projects focussed on climate change. She moved on from local government and qualified as a Garden Designer (DipGD) creating a number of private, RHS and community gardens with a focus on local food production and plants with biodiversity benefits. She also worked for the Wildlife Trusts and Learning through Landscapes. She delivered teaching to a wide range of audiences and ran part of the national citizen science Polli-Nation research project, which engaged over 200 schools across the UK in identifying species and improving their grounds for specific pollinator groups (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/opal/surveys/pollinationsurvey/).
Her PhD at Keele focussed on reconstructing relict ice margins linked to the last glaciation in the UK. This used a multidisciplinary approach to explore inland glacial deposits, with a focus on geomorphological mapping, geochemistry and sedimentology.
Research and scholarship
Angie is co-ordinating the BioGain project at Keele University. Funded initially by the QR Policy Fund in 2022, this project provides a baseline and monitors the above- and below-ground biodiversity at the Low Carbon Energy Generation Park on campus, exploring opportunities for enhancing biodiversity and soil health on such sites.
Angie is Principal Investigator at Keele for Nature in your Neighbourhood, a 5-year project centred around community groups making their local greenspaces better for nature. Led by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust and in partnership with Moorlands Climate Action (MCA), OUTSIDE, Staffordshire Moorlands District Council (SMDC) and Staffordshire Council of Voluntary Youth Services (SCVYS) the project began in 2024. Angie’s role is to create place-based citizen science materials and provide training in surveying and data analysis. The project also supports a PhD student investigating a citizen science place-based approach in the delivery of habitat biodiversity, climate resilience and human wellbeing.
Angie also acts as second supervisor on two additional PhD research projects: Towards Convivial Conservation: Peatlands, Beavers and Biodiversity and Public Understandings of Peatland Conservation: Community engagement in conservation practice. Both are funded through the Sustainable Rural Futures Fund (SURF) as part of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Programme.
Teaching
Angie has taught in the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, and the School of Life Sciences since 2019. This has mainly been within the fields of physical geography, environmental science, sustainability, ecology and biodiversity. She leads modules on Environmental Impact Assessment and various fieldwork opportunities focussed on landscape change including glaciated landscapes of the UK and the French Alps. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority and has a PG Cert in Teaching in Higher Education.
Publications
