Position:
Research Student
Email:
Telephone:
+44 (0)29 208 76015
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Hannah Pitt
PhD Title: Becoming a community garden
My research aims to understand the character and characters, impacts and affects of community gardening. Using an ethnographic approach I consider community gardens as processes of place making, following three gardens over the course of a year or more. My work is informed by ideas from ecological anthropology and cultural geography, with an interest in how non-humans play a part in shaping gardens. I use visual methods to help document and understand the range of processes unfolding in each garden, and use images as a more than verbal presentation of what these places are like. This will add to understanding of the role of experiences like gardening and places like gardens in our wellbeing and attitudes to nature.
I began my PhD research in 2010 as part of the President’s Research Scholarships theme of Food and Sustainable City Regions.
Supervisors: Professor Paul Milbourne, Dr. Peter Mackie
Biography
- MSc Sustainability, Planning and Environmental Policy Cardiff University (2004)
- BSoc.Sc. Social Anthropology. Manchester University (1997)
Before beginning this research I spent several years working on environmental policy for non-governmental organisations in Wales, with a focus on food and sustainable land management. During this time I sat on the Land Use and Climate Change Group established by the Welsh Government, and the task and finish group for Wales’ first Community Food Action Plan. I currently sit on Coed Cadw-Woodland Trust Wales’ Advisory Group.
Publications & Other Outputs
- ‘By the community for the community’ - Relating experiences of gardening with othersPresentation at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, Edinburgh 2012
- ‘Five flavours of Fieldwork’ Presentation at Place to plate: New Connections in Food Research , Cardiff University, 2012
- ‘On the nature of entanglements with non-human gardeners’ Presentation at the Annual Meeting of Association of American Geographers, New York 2012
- Steering Committee for Place to plate- New Connections in Food Research Cardiff University, 2012
- Consultant to Pembroke 21C Community Association for Supporting Sustainable Living Stage 1 Scoping Report, 2011
- ‘Dig in - the march of a new land army’ article in Rural Wales Summer 2011, CPRW