Alette

I am an apprentice on the Diploma in Applied Permacuture Design and I have a background in human geography and environmental studies. I am currently Senior Lecturer in Applied Social Science at the University of Edinburgh. One of my DAPD designs was for an undergraduate course, which introduces students at the University of Edinburgh to permaculture design, while having them work on a real-world problem to do with Nature, Greenspace and Health.

I am also a performance storyteller and an award-winning children’s author, with a specialism in storytelling for personal and social transformation, particularly in relation to environmental issues and science communication. I have articles on the subject in the Journal of Environmental Education, the Routledge collection Storytelling for Sustainability in Higher Education: An Educator’s Handbook (2020) and the Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning. I published Dancing with Trees: Eco-tales of the British Isles with Allison Galbraith in 2017. I am Secretary to the Scottish Storytelling Forum, and I was Storyteller in Residence to the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland for 2 years, and is the editorial consultant on the International project, The Earth Stories Collection (www.theearthstoriescollection.org)

I am originally from Canada, where I first learned about permaculture in the early 1990s from Dr Stuart Hill on the Ecological Agriculture Programme at McGill University. I have lived in Edinburgh since 2008 and I have designed and grown a forest garden in my back garden, just over 2kms from Edinburgh Castle.