Teaching Associate in Human Geography, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge

Liam is a political and environmental geographer whose research focuses on the geopolitics of climate change concerning small island states and rising sea levels. His work explores how the relationship between territory and statehood is being reimagined in low-lying atolls in light of rising sea levels. It examines how space and time shape understandings of climate change and the implications for critical geopolitics, adaptation, and diplomacy.

Liam is interested in how different forms of knowledge are mobilised in controversies over the futures of atoll states. Specifically, he is interested in how vertical geopolitics and geographies of the ocean intersect in the construction of atoll states as “sinking islands” and resistance to this term. His DPhil (PhD) thesis was entitled “Rising Seas and Sinking Islands: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in Tuvalu and Kiribati”.

Liam’s ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship was entitled “Prefiguring the Future: Climate Adaptation and Youth Diplomacy in Tuvalu”. Building on his doctoral research, this project has two focuses. Firstly, on the role that land reclamation plays in climate change adaptation in low-lying atoll states and its broader geopolitics. Secondly, the role of youth and youthful bodies within Tuvaluan climate diplomacy.

His current research thinks about the changing role of the UK as an environmental actor in the South Pacific, in light of the “Pacific Uplift” that the UK has initiated as part of “Global Britain”. Drawing on archival materials, Liam is tracing how historical narratives of environmental degradation, population displacement and marginality in British colonies in the South Pacific influence contemporary climate discourses.