Dr Harriet Smith

Dr Harriet Smith is a Research Associate in the School of Psychology, Cardiff University. She has an interdisciplinary background having worked in the geography department at Cardiff University (2018-2021) and prior to that was awarded a PhD in visual sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Dr Smith is experienced in participatory and ethnographic social science methods and has also utilised art practices as a means to engage participants in specific problems and learning outcomes. She has also worked on public engagement projects, impact accelerator research dissemination and public arts workshops.

Dr Smith is interested in multispecies and more-than-human research and projects investigating human interactions with other animals, natures and urban environments. She has worked with people to harness their imaginations and capacities to develop more empathic understandings of encounters within ongoing contexts as well as those in the making. Her research has concentrated on types of human inter-species encounters and more conceptual areas such as how people engage in connective nature experiences.

She is also interested in research that develops practice based understandings of the affective and sensory ways people inhabit, or move through environments and encounters with others. In addition to this further interests concern exploring with local people how the changes required to decarbonise industrial energy usage will unfold new opportunities as well as challenges in the landscapes of South Wales.