Associate Professor in Law and Anthropology (Law), University of Sussex

Helen's work centres on rights and relationships between people and the earth, particularly land rights, the protection of forests, ecocultural relationships, and Earth law. She has worked with forest peoples, farming communities, musicians, NGOs, international organisations, legal and conservation professionals, and academics in Tanzania, the UK, Ecuador and globally.

Helen has a multidisciplinary academic background. She holds a BA (Hons), Philosophy and Politics (PPE) (Oxford), LLM Public International Law (UCL, London), MA Music/Ethnomusicology (SOAS, London), and PhD Law and Anthropology (Sussex). Prior to her academic career Helen was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple and practised as a barrister in child and family law for several years. She is also CELTA-qualified in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (Advance HE).

Key publications include her book, 'Women, Land and Justice in Tanzania' (James Currey, 2015), a journal special issue, 'People and Forests at the Legal Frontier' as part of her AHRC Leadership Fellowship for the project 'Reimagining the Law of the Forest', and a co-edited book, 'UK Earth Law Judgments: Reimagining Law for People and Planet' (with Bonnie Holligan and Helena Howe, Hart, 2024), which brought together scholars across the UK and beyond, to imagine new approaches to legal decision-making. She writes and presents the People & Forests podcast. Helen is also a flautist with a love for African, South American and Caribbean music and dance. This blend of interests has led to her latest research programme on Indigenous Peoples' rights and sounds of the earth.

Helen has held visiting research positions at the Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California Berkeley in 2016, the Faculty of Forestry and W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of British Columbia in 2023, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in 2024. She has worked as a consultant with the Institute of Development Studies on long-term multi-country studies concerning gender, land and agriculture in Africa funded by FCDO and served as an Executive Body member of the Commission on Legal Pluralism. She is an Associate Editor of Earth Stewardship (a journal of the Ecological Society of America), an Expert member of the UN Harmony with Nature Programme, member of the UKRI Talent Peer Review College and Fellow of the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme.