My work focuses on the governance and politics of forest fires. My PhD research examined how agrarian change intersects with fire regimes, how technologies and disaster framings shape fire governance, and how often-invisible forms of forest dependence influence fire intensity and risk. I am now developing this work further by engaging with questions of political economy, particularly around social reproduction, land, and insurance, and by taking a comparative approach to the regional and global dynamics of contemporary fire governance. I am currently associated with the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society.

My current research develops along three interrelated areas:

1) From political ecology to political economy 

Building on my earlier work in the political ecology of fire, which examined blame narratives and misrepresentations of Indigenous and traditional communities and their fire use, I now extend this research by analysing how fire is embedded within the rural political economy. This work focuses in particular on social reproduction, gendered labour in forest dependence, and the centrality of land and its politics in shaping fire use. In doing so, I examine how the ecological crisis of forest fires overlaps with crisis of social reproduction in forested landscapes.

2) From rural to urban

While my earlier research focused on rural forest landscapes in the Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, I am now extending my work to urban and peri-urban wildfire contexts, particularly around Cape Town, South Africa. This shift in geography brings with it a shift in focus, as the consequences of fire in urbanised settings extend beyond biodiversity, carbon, and rural livelihoods that characterise many rural fire geographies in the Global South, to include risks to private property, air quality, and the loss of recreational spaces. In these contexts, both fire-related losses and the solutions proposed to address them are embedded in market-based logics, with fire management guided not only by ecological concerns but also by the protection of capital. 

3) From livelihoods to insurance

Looking at fire in urban geographies highlights how both fire-related losses and the solutions proposed to address them are shaped not only by ecological concerns but also by the protection of private property. In my emerging focus on the wildfire–urban interface, where market economies shape understandings of loss, risk, and responsibility, I am particularly drawn to the role of insurance. In this context, my work examines how different stakeholder actors understand the role of insurance in addressing wildfire risk, and how the evolving role of private insurance is positioned in relation to state responsibility for fire management and climate adaptation. Focusing on Cape Town allows me to extend analyses of fire insurance beyond well-studied contexts such as the United States and Australia, and to explore how the roles of insurance and the state in fire management are understood in a setting marked by extreme inequalities along lines of race and class.