Meet the team

Malcolm Tait, Principal Investigator, School of Geography and Planning, University of Sheffield

Malcolm Tait is Professor of Planning at the University of Sheffield. His research interests align around understanding the politics of planning. He is particularly interested in the ways that knowledge is valued and used in planning, and the ways in which professionals operate. He has recently led projects funded by NERC, ESRC, and AHRC, including the ESRC-funded Working in the Public Interest project that explored the role of professionals in the contemporary planning systems of the UK. More recently, his focus has shifted towards the ecological and biodiversity crises and the role that planning systems play in both exacerbating and addressing them.

Kiera Chapman, Co-Investigator, Faculty of English, University of Oxford

Kiera Chapman holds an independent postdoctoral research fellowship in the English Faculty and Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre at Oxford University. She works at the interface of social science and arts and humanities, and is particularly interested in the way that shifting aesthetic ideas of natural beauty have changed the historical relationship between grey and green spaces in cities. In this project, she will be exploring the ways in which current and emerging policy to protect biodiversity are reshaping the places where we live, to the exclusion of alternative visions of nature. She is a popular nature writer and author of Nature’s Calendar: the British Year in 72 Seasons (Granta, 2023), with a second commercial book on ritual customs out soon.

Rob Davies, Post-doctoral Researcher, School of Biosciences, University of Sheffield

Rob Davies is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on improving understanding of how biodiversity is structured across space and time and assessing ways to effectively conserve this biodiversity. His PhD research focussed on improving understanding of the ecological processes that maintain and differentiate the biodiversity of southern African savannas and identifying conservation actions in savanna landscapes. In this project, he will quantify the impacts of different planning policy regimes on outcomes for nature, assessing changes in habitat area and modelling subsequent effects on bird community composition. 

Karl Evans, Co-Investigator, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, School of Biosciences, University of Sheffield

Karl Evans is a Senior Lecturer in Conservation Biology. His research focuses on biodiversity responses to environmental change, and how negative impacts of human activity can be minimised through conservation interventions and policy. Urbanisation is one of the key themes running through this research. Whilst trained as an ecologist his research is increasingly multi-disciplinary, drawing on social science methods,  and combining large scale approaches with intensive fieldwork at more local scales. Publications are available here. 

Andy Inch, Co-Investigator, School of Geography and Planning, University of Sheffield

Andy Inch is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography and Planning at the University of Sheffield. With previous experience in Portugal and Scotland, his research explores the politics of planning and urban change with a particular focus on the roles of community planning, activism and public participation in imagining and shaping more just and democratic futures. Over recent years he has explored these themes through projects funded by the ESRC, AHRC and EUH2020 programme. He has published widely in leading interdisciplinary journals in planning, urban policy and futures studies. He is an editor of the journal Planning Theory and Practice and sits on the editorial board of Planning Theory.

Andy Lockhart, Post-doctoral Researcher, School of Geography and Planning, University of Sheffield

Andy Lockhart is a postdoctoral research associate in the School of Geography and Planning. He works primarily in human geography and urban studies, and is interested in the politics of crisis through the lens of political economy and political ecology. His work has covered topics from urban transport and infrastructure development to biodiversity and planning to digital and automated/robotic technologies. Andy brings with him in-depth knowledge of biodiversity net gain, having completed his PhD in 2016 on the aborted development of its immediate predecessor in England - biodiversity offsetting - between 2010 and 2015.

Tom Wild, Co-Investigator, Landscape, University of Sheffield

Tom Wild is a Lecturer in the School of Architecture & Landscape at the University of Sheffield. He is a landscape ecologist with >25 years’ professional and research experience, including as principal investigator for the H2020 project Conexus and several other interdisciplinary grants. Tom previously held roles as Director in Sheffield City Council, leading the South Yorkshire Forest Partnership, and in environmental planning and protection. With a focus on ecosystem restoration and nature-based solutions, he holds skills in developing international partnerships and delivering collaborative projects, and has worked as an appointed expert with the EC, UNEP, Biodiversa+, and Defra. Tom is a member of the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority's Advisory Panel for the Local Nature Recovery Strategy. He established the Local Nature Partnership in 2012, chairing its Board until 2015, and was a founder Director of the River Stewardship Company and Don Catchment Rivers Trust. Tom maintains a strong cross-sectoral network of contacts in the not-for-profit, public, research and private sectors.