Course Director, Music Psychology in Education, Performance and Wellbeing, University of Sheffield I received my PhD and MA in Music Psychology from the University of Sheffield, where I am currently the Course Director of the MA in Music Psychology in Education, Performance and Wellbeing, and an Honorary Research Fellow. I am a longstanding Fellow of the Incorporated Society of Musicians (recently renamed as the Independent Society of Musicians), a registered trainer for the British Association of Performing Arts Medicine, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. After an early career as a professional singer with international contracts, I developed a diverse portfolio of work as a performer, teacher, conductor, choral arranger, director and workshop leader. I have run my own professional theatre company, opera group and jazz ensemble, alongside maintaining a well-established private teaching practice. I have also taught extensively in primary and secondary schools, Further Education colleges and Higher Education institutions, including York St John University and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. My research interests include performance anxiety management; confidence building for performers; music and wellbeing; ensemble leadership; and group dynamics in musical contexts. I have a special interest in the practical applications of research, and regularly lead public engagement and training events based on my research, teaching and professional experience. My participatory workshops have included voice training for transgender and non-binary people; group singing for people who self-identify as ‘non-singers’; using singing-related skills to support people with respiratory conditions and vocal disorders; music and wellbeing sessions for mental health service users; practical applications of performance psychology for singers, conductors and choir leaders; and developing confident performance in a wide range of musical and non-musical settings.
PhD Candidate, School of Earth and Environment Sciences, The University of Queensland I am a Fijian woman pursuing a PhD at The University of Queensland, in Brisbane, Australia. My project seeks to advance understanding of opportunities and challenges for transformative mobilities where mobility contributes to climate change adaptation and positive development outcomes across multiple scales, places of origin, destination and transition. My research site is Fiji. Standing on the shoulders of three Giants that form my advisory team A/Prof Karen McNamara (UQ), A/Prof Celia McMichael (Unimelb) and Dr Annah Piggott-McKellar (QUT). Prior to my PhD journey, I have worked at USP as a regional teaching assistant/facilitator for students around the Pacific. During my PhD , I have been privileged to be part of several projects funded by the Australian Research Council as a research assistant and project officer using Talanoa research method to investigate climate change and adaptation, voluntary immobility, planned relocation, place-belongingness and gender food security and disaster resilience in the context of climate-related risks. I have conducted fieldwork in 8 communities in Fiji from 2021 to 2022. I am also a fellow with Australia Climate for Change organisation whose main aim is to help everyday Australians to have a better conversation about climate change and to take action.
Associate professor, Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Planning, and Environment at Concordia University. Author of Displacing Blackness: Planning, Power, and Race in Twentieth-Century Halifax (University of Toronto Press, 2018) and Out to Defend Ourselves: A History of Montreal's First Haitian Street Gang (Fernwood Publishing, spring 2023).
Postdoctoral researcher in the Animal Evolutionary Ecology, University of Tübingen I was an ENVISION DTP NERC funded PhD student at Lancaster Environment Centre. Rachel’s research focused on the behavioural ecology, specifically individual differences in behaviour/personality in response to climate change, and macroecology, considering how distributions of reef fish may change under future climatic conditions.
Senior Lecturer, Lancaster University Using coral reefs as a model system, my team aims to: (1) figure out if, when, how and why animal behaviour can scale up to influence the diversity and distribution of life on Earth, (2) identify and explain global geographical patterns in animal behaviour, (3) capture the impact of environmental change on (1)&(2), predict ecological vulnerability into the future, and offer solutions to increase ecosystem resilience. To achieve these aims, we combine purpose-built fieldwork with a macroecological approach, conducting behavioural research in multiple locations across the world. This broad geographic coverage allows us to identify generalisable "rules" for how animals behave and understand how behaviour is affected by an animal's biotic and abiotic environment in the real-world.
