At Sussex I discovered that the continental tradition offered an integrated view of philosophical thinking, which draws upon literature, aesthetics and historical perspectives and refuses to divide philosophical inquiry into specialised fields, each dealing with its own technical problems. I was particularly drawn to the work of Martin Heidegger, who featured in various courses that I took with Rickie Dammann, Michael Morris and Paul Davis. 

I spent part of the year following my BA in India, where I became involved in the Save Narmada Movement, which campaigns against the building of large dams and the environmental devastation and social injustice that they cause. My environmentalist sentiments were fused with a renewed appreciation of global politics and economics. Since then I have been involved in direct action in ecological and peace movements and in local green politics. 

At Warwick University I was able to pursue my interest in continental philosophy and was led to an appreciation of less well know figures such as Henri Bergson and new research on Heidegger in Miguel de Beistegui’s course on Contributions to Philosophy. I conceived of a PhD project to be supervised by Miguel, which would explore Heidegger’s conception of living nature as a contribution to environmental philosophy, but was initially unable to secure funding for the project and spent a year teaching English as a foreign language and then learning German in Freiburg. I obtained funding on my second attempt and was later enabled to return to Freiburg for a year of research with a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service. I moved to the University of East Anglia in 2008.