Moving into administrative services in Higher Education, I undertook two roles in the busy Registry: Student Records office at the University of Worcester. The first role involved creating, maintaining and generating information from the paper and electronic records of students. Generated information included interim transcripts, headed status letters and notifications for Student Finance. Assigned a specific disciplinary area (Biological Sciences, Geography, Archaeology), I took particular responsibility for administering the Subject Exam Boards. This involved preparing the papers, attending, taking and circulating minutes, and completing agreed actions (such as confirming students' grades). The second role involved using the student records to administer requests for references and award verification. I also took particular responsibility for the student records for students studying to or from Universities abroad as part of a study abroad or exchange programme. Alongside these two roles and their areas of specific responsibility, I also worked with the team during key events in the student lifecycle such as Clearing, Welcome Weekend and Graduation.

The successful conversion of my role as Administrative Assistant into a part time job share enabled me to undertake a part time secondment as a Programme Assistant on the University of Minnesota Duluth Study Abroad in England Programme simultaneously. This role involved advising students of the mapping of modules taught at UW and UMD (significant to the fulfillment of their award requirements), organising trips and events to help them explore the UK and its culture, and offering comprehensive pastoral care. Liaising with the Head of International Experience to bid successfully for University funding for a SAP (Students as Academic Partners) project, I also worked alongside some of the students to collect photographs, anecdotes and stories about their experience which led to the creation of a new range of promotional material. This secondment opportunity was particularly interesting because I was responsible for the student records of the same students I advised when they experienced homesickness, drove to the Lake District to explore Lake Windermere and listened to as they told me about their goals for the future.

Following a successful bid for Rural Development Programme for England funding, I was appointed by the Revd Robert Barlow as the Project Officer to manage and implement a 6 month project titled "Our Stories in Living History". The project involved creating new footpath trails across the parish of the South Teme Valley (Worcestershire, UK) taking in notable features of the landscape such as natural waterfalls, wartime bomb craters and gardens designed by Capability Brown. To bring these trails to life, I created a geocache (an item to be found by visitors completing a treasure hunt) for each Church in the parish and collected oral histories which could be listened to online. The oral histories were collected from a range of participants (including local parishioners, farmers and historians). The project materials were made available in the Churches within the parish, in local Tourist Information Centres and via this website http://www.temevalleysouth.org.uk/our-stories-in-living-history/

My PhD in rural/agricultural geography involved research and a written thesis based on family farming in the UK. My thesis sought to provide rich and detailed insights into family farming and explain their survival from the end of the 2nd World War to the current day. Living on a family farm for fieldwork revealed their internal dynamics (their family relationships and productivist motivations, daily routines, seasonal activities and annual events), creative and strategic use of technology and tools, and external dynamics (their interactions with the agri-food system and sense of local community). Despite predictions of doom and demise in the literature, my thesis argued that these core elements of family farming had enabled them to not only survive, but to define their own success and realise it.