I grew up in Cologne and first found my way into emergency response as a teenager, serving as a volunteer paramedic with the German Red Cross. I began by studying a little civil and agricultural engineering, but my interests eventually pulled me toward philology — a blend of linguistics and literary studies — and later across the North Sea.
After moving to Scotland, I completed a master’s degree in Language Contact and began doctoral research exploring how mathematical and phylogenetic approaches from epidemiology might be applied to historical linguistic change. My work sits at the intersection of language, systems thinking, and the mechanics of change over time.
Alongside academia, I have worked as a caseworker and gained qualifications in Employment Law and Occupational Health & Safety, as well as additional first responder training. I continue to stay close to emergency-response work through volunteering with Scottish Cave Rescue, so more underground environments, risk, and casualty care.
I am also a trustee of the Nenthead Mines Conservation Society. Historical mines are one of my great passions: I spend much of my free time involved in mine conservation, underground restoration, and exploration archaeology. I am fascinated by the engineering, history, and human stories behind these spaces — and I like playing in the mud.
Outside of work, I stay anchored through movement. I practise ballet, kung fu, and both lion and dragon dance — disciplines that challenge coordination, balance, and focus in very different ways while being deeply rooted in history. I also used to train in historical fencing, which first sparked my love of embodied history and the mechanics of movement across cultures and eras.
Beyond research and rescue, I have a lifelong love of “navigational fluids” and the things that move through them — ships, aircraft, weather systems, and the beautiful logic of fluid mechanics. Navigation, motion, and complex systems are recurring themes across all my interests, whether I’m reading old texts, climbing into a mine, or watching the wind shear shift over a runway.
In my current role as a Research Fellow, I work on disability, policy systems, and human factors — examining how institutions design policies, why implementation so often fails, and how organisational structures can be reshaped to genuinely support disabled staff. My work combines insights from linguistics, systems engineering, aviation safety, and inclusion research to map the “policy machinery” behind reasonable adjustments and identify the structural and cognitive factors that shape real-world outcomes. At its core, my research is about building institutions that work as intended — not only on paper, but in practice, for the people who rely on them.
This blog brings these threads together: languages, systems, safety, policy, engineering, and the odd bit of mud from whichever mine I’ve wandered into most recently.
