meet the team

Community Engagement Manager

Anna Ravenscroft is a storyteller, community convener and heritage interpretation specialist. Her practice focuses on telling relevant, accessible and inclusive stories. As Community Lead for Melting Metropolis she intends to make sure audiences are taken on this journey alongside the team, with mutual influence at every step of the way.

Principal Investigator

Chris Pearson is Professor of Environmental History, specialising in urban and transnational history (as well as working on human-canine histories). Alongside managing the project, he researches and writes on histories of heat across London, New York, and Paris.

“Urban heat is an ever more troubling aspect of climate breakdown. My hope is that this project will help cities and communities confront this challenge.”

Project Manager

Dr Katy Dutton is a historian of medieval England and France with expertise in landscape history. Since gaining her PhD in 2011, she has worked on a number of funded international projects at several leading UK universities and is the project manager for Melting Metropolis.

Research Artist

Bryony Ella is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in public engagement with science. She has also spent 10 years curating social history exhibitions. Drawing upon Melting Metropolis’ research and community engagement, she is developing new participatory practices and art works that explore embodied experiences and expressions of urban heat - past and present.

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Jon is a historian, geographer and heritage practitioner. Within the Melting Metropolis project he is researching oral histories of heat in Somers Town and London more widely. As an urban environmental historian, he is keen to show the important role that history can play in understanding and adapting to climate change.

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Rosie is a cultural and health geographer and uses ethnographic and creative approaches to explore embodied experiences of health and place. As part of the Melting Metropolis team she is working with communities through ethnographic and creative participatory approaches to research everyday and lived experiences of urban heat in Bristol and London.

Co-Investigator

Kara Schlichting is an urban environmental historian. As part of the Melting Metropolis team, she is contributing to research on and community engagement in New York City, with a focus on the borough of Queens. She is researching how climate equity gaps in the past and present shape New Yorkers' responses to summer heat and the urban heat island effect.

Doctoral Candidate

Through a University of Liverpool-funded PhD studentship, Kistian Flemming is researching the geographies of health and environmental change through the study of heat in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. This interdisciplinary study examines the past and present of the urban heat island effect and evaluates creative approaches to human geography scholarship on urban health in a changing world. The PhD is supervised by Shelda-Jane Smith, Bryony Ella, Gabrielle Thongs (University of the West Indies at St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago), and Chris Pearson.

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Chloé Duteil is an environmental historian and is currently finishing her doctoral thesis on human-seaweeds interactions in coastal communities. As part of the Melting Metropolis project, she explores the ways in which city dwellers in Paris have responded and adapted to heat.

Co-Investigator

Dr Laura Balderstone is a lecturer in Twentieth Century British History, specialising in urban and oral history. She has a particular interest in intergenerational oral history and the way it can be used to help foster relationships between different age groups in local communities.

“I believe that conversations within, and between, communities will become increasingly important in helping to address the climate crisis as we move forward.”

Co-Investigator

Shelda-Jane Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, specialising in health and medical geographies using ethnographic and community-based approaches to explore human-environment relations. She has worked across institutional (NHS) and community settings in both the UK and Caribbean. As part of the Melting Metropolis team, she is researching the intersections of health, psychology and present-day environmental action and policy in relation to urban heat and rising global temperatures.

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Daniel is a historian of the twentieth-century U.S. His scholarship explores the intersections of urban history, environmental justice, and racial capitalism. As part of the Melting Metropolis team, he is researching how histories of heat reshape our understanding of postwar inequality in New York City.