I am a social researcher with a focus on wealth inequality, climate change and contemporary experiences of connection and isolation.
I critique the neoliberal ideologies and racial inequalities that shape the current era, exploring narratives of intimacy and loneliness amid public care, housing, and climate system failures.
My work investigates how experiences of social alienation come to be felt and told in overdeveloped contexts, and the types of relational antidotes gaining popularity in urban communities (such as family abolition, polyamory, relationship anarchy, radical intimacy, or communal housing) in response.
I am motivated by unease with the encroachment of property logics on the language of social connection, the erasure of indigenous and Black knowledges that the presenting of alternative relational practices as ‘radical’ can entail, and the construction of intimacy as a superior kind of social connection.
I write on social and climate politics in Aotearoa and welcome opportunities to contribute in areas of my expertise - please contact me.
Experience
Social Researcher
2023 – present
I collaborate extensively with economist Shamubeel Eaqub, based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Our major focus is economic exclusion and urban housing systems, with various past projects providing support to the Aotearoa Housing First Alliance or researching social housing failures. We also work across regulatory, climate, and social policy areas, and have experience with conversational interviewing techniques.
Sense Partners
2021 – 2023
My work at Sense Partners included analysis across a diverse range of economic projects, including significant work on a dynamic CGE modelling project assessing the costs and benefits of incorporating low-carbon transportation fuels into New Zealand’s fuel mix out to 2035. Between 2021 and 2022 I also provided regular public commentary on energy policy and economics.
International Energy Agency
2020
During my first research placement at the IEA I focused on Australia’s renewable electricity transition. I developed a predictive modelling project on Australia’s electricity supply, looking at energy mix and policy implications out to 2025. In an extended internship, I contributed analysis to the first Electricity Market Report, published in December 2020 on electricity markets trends globally.
Reserve Bank of New Zealand
2018 - 2019
My work at the central bank focused on financial exclusion, culminating in an in-depth review of the NBDT sector under prudential regulation between 2010-2018. I extended my work with the RBNZ to research value-at-risk in the financial system due to cyber risk, publishing on both topics.
UNICEF Aotearoa
2015 - 2018
I worked with UNICEF Aotearoa over 2.5 years, coordinating digital responses for emergent situations in Syria and the Pacific, responding quickly and professionally to critical disasters affecting children in these regions. My work had a strong focus on building awareness of climate change adaptation needs in the Pacific and included co-leading the Aotearoa office’s website rebuild.