My PhD research, ‘Exploring children’s rights to participation and the geographies of meaning-making in the sixth mass extinction’ explores children’s participation rights in the current climate crisis and sixth mass extinction of species.
Through co-created research activities and material, interspecies experiences, I consider children’s meaning-making in situ and their participation in biodiversity loss responses. This draws together interdisciplinary perspectives on children’s rights, interspecies nature, and educational responses to biodiversity loss that promote eco-social wellbeing.
I am a child rights and participation specialist with Scotland’s Children’s Parliament, where I lead environmental projects, including facilitating child participation in Scottish Government’s Learning for Sustainability Leadership Group (2021-ongoing) and national engagement between children and decision-makers for COP26 and Scotland’s Climate Assembly, the first climate citizens’ assembly in the world to include children (2021).
Children's geographies
Children’s Rights
Eco-feminism
Politics and geographies of nature and childhood
Education and curriculum-making
Political ecology
Indigenous knowledges
Posthumanism
Environmental politics
Research Assistant, Children's Participation Worker on Artificial Intelligence The Alan Turing Institute, Scottish Government and Children's Parliament
Priestley M, Schuler B, Georgescu S, Mouroutsou S, Priestley A, Rushton E, Smith J, Duggan B, Morris F & Sinnema C (2025) Curriculum and assessment design and pedagogy in the Curriculum for Wales: a qualitative study. Welsh Government. Cardiff: Welsh Government.
Teaching
PhD Student, Education Division, University of Stirling (ongoing)
BA Geography, University of Cambridge, 2017-2020
SCVO Project Management Certified
2023 Spiritual Ecology Certificate, RBGE and Emergence Magazine