I created this site to encourage me to write more and publish anything worth sharing. It’s also a way for me to play around with Git, Github Pages, and Markdown. However, illness means content will be added sporadically and infrequently, and there will be long spells when the site will lie dormant.

I’ve now been ill with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) since late 2016, though I wasn’t fully well for several years before that. In 2023, after many years living with ‘moderate’ ME/CFS, my condition became more severe, with onset of PoTS/dysautonomia/orthostatic intolerance (which are very common in people with ME/CFS). I also suffer with severe tinnitus and problems with visual processing that align with a diagnosis of visual snow syndrome, which is much more than the singular symptom of seeing ‘visual snow’/static.

Prior to becoming too ill to work, I did scientific research in the fields of atmospheric and ocean physics. I obtained my PhD from the University of Leeds in 2014, with a thesis investigating the role of ocean wave-breaking and whitecaps on air-sea exchange. I stayed in the same research group as a research fellow (post-doc) until the end of 2016, during which time my focus was investigation of air-sea exchange over Arctic sea ice. I was lucky enough to spend six weeks onboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden in summer 2014 as part of the SWERUS-C3 expedition.

In September 2017, I took a one-year position at ECMWF working on the representation of the ocean’s diurnal cycle in weather prediction models, but by this stage my health was declining further. I managed to stay in the role until the end of my contract with a lot of support and by moving first to part-time hours and then remote working.

I worked part-time as a freelance copy-editor during 2019 and early 2020, editing manuscripts for publication in leading atmospheric science, ocean science, climate, and meteorology journals.

For three years I volunteered as a member of the Patient Advisory Group (PAG) to the ME Research Collaborative (MERC), formerly known as the CFS/ME Research Collaborative (CMRC). Now, much of my involvement in patient advocacy revolves around discussion and calls to action on the Science For ME (S4ME) forum.