My academic work explores how people come to answer the question “what ought I to do?” in relation to the more-than-human world.  According to Socrates, this question is at the heart of ethics.  According to narrative counsellors, a person’s self-story is developed through the process of answering this question. This places ethics at the centre of identity.

My PhD dissertation drew on the literature of narrative counselling to engage dialogically with ecological memoirs, memoirs in which the writer wrote about his or her self in relation to place and in relation to the organisms who also dwelt in that place.  I read over 100 book- and essay-length memoirs keeping my own self-story open to being changed through the process.  The aim of my dissertation was to open up possibilities for being and acting in the world through thinking with stories.

I am currently working on a post-doctoral research project exploring the use of oral storytelling in environmental education and interpretation.  I hope to extend my work into examining how formal and informal oral storytelling helps communities re-story their relationships with the more-than-human world towards greater sustainability.

I am interested not only in studying ethics and identity outside of academic institutions, but also inside them.  In my professional life and my writing I am constantly trying to come up with adequate answers to the question “what ought I to do as an academic?”

Restor(y)ing Our Place in the World: A narrative approach to an everyday ethics of the self in relationship to earth others and to place. PhD Dissertation, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa.  2007.

Restorying my self and my academic practice:  Applying narrative counselling techniques to ecological memoirs.  Seminar given 27 November 2008 in Counselling and Psychotherapy, the School of Health in Social Science, University of Edinburgh.