Summary

I'm a vision impaired astronomer and outreach and public engagement officer. I currently lead the Tactile  Universe public engagement project, which is developing resources to help vision impaired people learn about current topics in astronomy.

I’m available for media interviews. I’ve previously been featured on national and regional media, including BBC News.

Biography

Originally from Australia, I'm a vision impaired astronomer and a Public Engagement and Outreach Fellow at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation. I currently lead the STFC funded Tactile Universe public engagement project (www.tactileuniverse.org), which is developing free multi-sensory resources to help blind and vision impaired people engage with current topics in astronomy. I also help others both nationally and internationally find ways to communicate science in more accessible ways.

I joined the ICG in 2014 as a visiting scholar while finishing the last few months of my PhD research which I began at Monash University in Australia. After completing my PhD, and an Endeavour Fellowship research project in the department, I was employed as an outreach officer.

Research interests

My current work and interests involve exploring multi-sensory techniques for communicating ideas in current astronomy research. Though this is aimed at helping blind and vision impaired people access topics in astronomy that are traditionally presented in visual formats, I firmly believe that improved accessibility helps everybody.

This work is currently jointly funded by a Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Nucleus Award and by the University of Portsmouth, 

My astronomy research background is in galaxy evolution and galaxy formation, specifically the study of large galaxy populations through the calculation and analysis of luminosity functions.