About me

Born in the dying days of the 70's, I'm currently living in Stirchley in Birmingham, England. I was born in the sacred grove of Wellington, Shropshire, and spent most of my childhood in Kingswinford, in the borough of Dudley, in the West Midlands of England.

I graduated in Computer Science from the University of Leicester in 2001 and was subsequently elected President of the Students' Union for two years. Pages about the time spent there can be found here and here.

Though I spent time working in local government, as a ski instructor and in an MEP's office, I eventually elected to return to academia, have completed a Master's degree in Natural Computation at the University of Birmingham, for which I was awarded a distinction and the prize of "Best Student". My particular research focus was investigating evolved economic and behaviour using an agent-based artificial society model.

I am now a research student in the same school, working towards a PhD under the supervision of Professor Xin Yao and Dr Paul Marrow at BT (my co-sponsor, along with the EPSRC). My working title is "Autonomic Solutions for Virtualised ICT Systems" and I maintain a page here about my work.

I'm also an activist, and when I make time, am involved in various campaigns. I'm mainly interested in the environment, peace, social justice, freedom (particularly digital freedom), respect and human and animal rights. I've been involved in People and Planet, am a fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe, a member of Liberty and supporter of Greenpeace. I'm also now a trustee of the University of Birmingham Guild of Students.

I am a keen photographer and pretty much all my (half-decent) photos can be found on my Flickr page. You can also take a look at the photography pages on this site, through the link at the top.

I'm also a great believer in localism, sustainability and being in touch with one's impact on the world. In practice, a lot of this is manifested through environmentalism, such as attempting to reduce my consumption of stuff. I also grow my own veg.

If you're interested in any of this, why not get in touch?