Research Associate

Contact Details

• Tel: 0116 252 3646
• Email: mek@le.ac.uk
• Fax: 0116 252 3854
• Office: Bennett Building F65

Research Interests

I am an interdisciplinary geographer with research interests that span social science, natural science and GIS. My research has developed as a synthesis of my practical and academic background in GIS, and passions for wildlife conservation, travel and interacting with people from many cultures. I am particularly interested in the development of participatory methods using video and mapping technologies and the role that ecosystem services play in subsistence societies in developing countries.

I am currently working as a Research Associate with Caroline Upton on ‘Community, Place and Pastoralism: Nature and Society in Post-Soviet Central Asia’ funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2010-2012). This research seeks to understand emerging social structures amongst nomadic herders and the role pastoralism plays within current development and environmental conservation debates. The study includes substantial ethnographic and participatory studies in Mongolia and Kazakhstan.

I completed my PhD from the University of Leicester in 2010 for a study of “Tugen Trails: The Role of Traditional Knowledge and Local Values of Ecosystem Services in the Rift Valley of Kenya”. This interdisciplinary study investigates the knowledge and values of ecosystem services for the Tugen people in the Rift Valley of Kenya; for one community, Sandai; and for one sector of that community, women. The study addresses issues of equity of ecosystem service valuations with regard to level of governance and heterogeneity of communities. A fresh approach is taken to the methodology by using hodology, the study of paths and interconnected ideas, to explore the natural and the intellectual environments. A long distance trail was walked across the Rift Valley to record links between environment and traditional knowledge. In Sandai, the competing value of the swamps for grazing, cultivation and biodiversity is demonstrated. Walking with Tugen women carrying heavy loads of water raised issues of equity in their roles in management of ecosystems services and their lack of involvement in environmental governance. In ecosystem service assessments women may pay the price for the decisions of others. Participatory video and mapping are linked with these walked trails and local voices are heard alongside my own. Finally, visualisations were produced using different media including Google Earth and a mediascape: ‘Walking with water’, which enables an embodied understanding of the lives of women.

In my earlier career I was a cartographer at the University of Leicester. I gained my MSc in GIS in 1995 and then worked as Research Assistant on the HEFCE funded Virtual Field Course project developing innovative tools for support of fieldwork teaching. I have also taught substantially, particularly on GIS courses at Leicester and Northampton.

For more information visit my blog site at  http://www.travelblog.org/bloggers/katem

Most Recent Publications

Phillips, M., Page, S., Saratsi, E., Tansey, K., Moore, K. (2008) Diversity, scale and green landscapes in the gentrification process: traversing ecological and social science perspectives. Applied Geography. 28, 1 54-76

Fletcher S., France, D., Moore, K. and Robinson, G. (2007) Practitioner Perspectives on the use of Technology in Fieldwork Teaching Journal of Geography in Higher Education,  31, 2, 319 – 330

Full listing of publications