Key Themes: gender, climate change, education, international development, agroecology, and new technologies, with aspirations to utilize this skill set to promote social and environmental justice, policy, Bangladesh, Sustainable Development, create a smartphone, rural women
Her doctoral thesis critically explored the "gender data revolution" in international development through an in-depth case study of a smartphone-based data collection project working with young women in Bangladesh. During her time in Bangladesh Isobel was appointed a "Visiting Research Fellow" at the Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Liberal Arts (ULAB) in Dhaka. She contributed to research activities at the CSD, including studies of Oxfam’s PROTIC project, which worked with rural women to create smartphone-based information services on climate adaptation strategies; pro-poor technology schemes in the Teknaf peninsula; and the effect of climate change on fishing villages in the Sunderbans. Additionally, Isobel taught classes for the modules "Introduction to Sustainable Development’ and ‘Economic Grassroots Development".
These experiences in Bangladesh motivated Isobel to seek out further opportunities to utilise her skills and experience to help fight the climate crisis and support the movement for climate and environmental justice. This led to her working as the research assistant for the Nuffield-funded "Trust and Climate Change: Information for Teaching in a Digital Age" project. This initiative brought together the Education Department and Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford with secondary schools and teachers to draft a research agenda to transform climate change teaching. She then went on to become the research assistant for the "Climate Change Education Futures in India" project, which sought to develop and deploy a framework for Climate Change Education (CCE) in India and beyond to increase the effectiveness of large-scale online CCE programs. Since completing her DPhil, Isobel has undertaken the role of Postdoctoral Researcher on the Refugee Health Education Programme (RHEP), which utilises participatory research techniques to develop a collaborative and scalable health education curriculum for refugees and survivors of trafficking and torture.