New Fellows join the School of Environment, Education and Development

13 Oct 2025

At the start of October we welcomed seven new fellows to the School, under the Simon and Hallsworth and Bicentenary Fellowship programmes.

We are excited to welcome a group of new Fellows to the School of Environment, Education and Development.

Four new colleagues have joined us as part of the Simon and Hallsworth Early Career Fellowship scheme:

Olivia Arigho Stiles is based in the Global Development Institute. She is an interdisciplinary researcher of Indigenous politics and the rural world in Bolivia. At SEED, she will be starting a project on ecological transformation and Indigenous movements in the Bolivian lowlands, 1952-2005.

Aliki Koutlou is based in Geography. Her research examines how households in Manchester and Thessaloniki navigate the intersecting energy, cost-of-living, and climate crises through their reproductive labour. It uses a feminist, relational-comparative approach to show how everyday survival practices both deplete and sustain life, illuminating the contradictions and political possibilities of reproductive work for more sustainable reproductive futures.

Fatima Lahham is based in Geography. She is a musician and researcher, and her project is about relationships to music and health in Muslim communities in the UK.

Ying Wang is based in the Global Development Institute. She is currently studying the political economy of Chinese involvement in clean tech industries in the Global South, especially in Indonesia and Kenya.

Three further colleagues have joined us as part of the Bicentenary Fellowship scheme: 

Amy McGuire is based in Geography. She will be investigating the timing and rate of sea ice retreat in the Arctic the last time polar temperatures were warmer-than-present, during the Last Interglacial (about 120,000 years ago).

Jorge Ortiz Moreno is based in Architecture. His project investigates how the deployment of decentralised water and energy infrastructures in Mexico and Puerto Rico can enable vulnerable populations to adapt to the intensifying effects of climate change while supporting just and resilient transitions.

Purva Dewoolkar is based in Geography. Her research integrates human geography, urban studies, critical development studies, and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH). As part of the Bicentenary Fellowship, she is collaborating with Mumbai's campaign for Universal Access to Water and Manchester's cultural institutions to develop care-centred, community-led approaches for documenting and understanding urban infrastructural struggles in the Global South, centering the lived experiences and vocabularies of resistance.

A very warm welcome to all seven new Fellows!