Meg Sherval

My work contributes to a robust tradition of critical geographical inquiry which recognises how \'natural resources are not naturally resources until human intervention\'. It examines how resource geographies are structured in significant ways by economic, political, environmental, social and cultural processes and how new resource geographies are created by greenfields discoveries and the opening up of new energy frontiers. My geographic research interests are place-based and revolve around issues of land-use change and development of new and emerging energy sources both locally and internationally. In researching these issues, I seek to understand the complicated dynamics associated with energy development - how it is framed materially and discursively, the strategic decision-making around it and the contestation that exists over access to, and use of it and other resources and the natural environment more generally. The focus of my research therefore, is on furthering understanding of the intricacies involved in transition (particularly in rural and remote regions) and dealing with uncertainty, vulnerability and risk which remain important as communities grapple with the effects of climate change, land-use transformation and contested ideas around governance and the use of nature, resources and spaces in the globalizing world.