Jennifer Dodsworth

Jennifer is a social scientist with expertise in cultural geography, environmental governance, and agri-environment policy. Her research spans both theoretical inquiry and applied, impact-focused projects, combining participatory and digital methodologies to explore rural landscapes, land management, and environmental change. She works at the intersection of academia and policy, engaging directly with farmers, policymakers, and local communities to co-develop practical solutions for sustainable agriculture and biodiversity restoration. As both a researcher and a tenant hill farmer in Cumbria, Jennifer also aims to integrate first-hand experience of land management into her research, ensuring her work remains grounded in the realities of rural livelihoods.

Jennifer’s research is focused on three key areas:

Agri-Environmental Policy & Governance

She leads a Defra-funded research project in the School of Geography and the Environment, investigating the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) Pilot and Environmental Land Management (ELM) test and trials. This work employs participatory methods to assess how new agri-environmental schemes can be designed to be both effective for farmers and beneficial for nature.

Agile Research & Policy Engagement

As a research fellow at the Oxford Martin School’s Agile Initiative, Jennifer will explore the benefits of the Agile Model in addressing urgent environmental and rural challenges. Her work expands Community Building & Training (CB&T) within Agile Research Sprints, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and stronger policy connections.

Cultural & Digital Geographies of Rural Landscapes

Building on her PhD research, Jennifer examines how digital representation and aesthetic values shape perceptions of rural environments. She investigates how platforms like social media influence public and farmer perspectives on landscape, heritage, and environmental change, particularly in iconic British landscapes such as the Lake District. Her work contributes to debates on digital ecologies, the politics of vision, and participatory visual methodologies in rural research.

By bridging theoretical study with real-world application, Jennifer’s interdisciplinary approach aims to foster meaningful collaborative research between environmental governance, academic inquiry, and lived experience in the agricultural community.

Awards and Funding

• Challenge of Rural Leadership scholarship, The Worshipful Company of Farmers (£6,000), 2025
• Co-design through Test and Trials, Defra Research Tender (£300k), 2023
• Fieldwork Research Grant, Our Common Cause, Foundation for Common Land & Heritage Fund (£3,500), 2019
• Paul Paget Award, Jesus College, University of Oxford, 2019
• ESRC Studentship, School of Geography & the Environment, University of Oxford, 2017
• AHRC Studentship, University of Cambridge (declined), 2016
• ESRC Studentship, Newcastle University (declined), 2016
• Best Dissertation Prize, MSc Nature, Society & Environmental Governance, University of Oxford, 2016
• Steward's Award for Environmental Research, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, 2016
• MA Postgraduate Scholarship, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, 2014
• John Wiseman Prize for Best Student Performance in Politics, Newcastle University, 2014

Chapters

• Dodsworth, J., et al. (2025) Chapter 6: Policy and recommendations. In, British Ecological Society. Regenerative Agriculture in the UK: An Ecological Perspective. London, UK. ISBN 978-1-0369-1546-9.
• Dodsworth, J., Lasko, R. and Little, R. (2024) Stick your wellies on: messy development and co-design processes with England’s new Environmental Land Management (ELM) policy. In, Reid, N., Norton, D. and Smith, R. (eds.) Managing Biodiversity in Agricultural Landscapes: Conservation, Restoration and Rewilding. Cambridge: Burleigh Dodds. 

Journal Articles 

• Turnbull, J., Searle, A., Hartman Davies, O., Dodsworth, J., Chasseray-Peraldi, P., von Essen, E. and Anderson-Elliott, H. (2023) Digital Ecologies: Materialities, Encounters, Governance. Progress in Environmental Geography 2(1-2): 3-32.
• Van Patter, L., Turnbull, J. and Dodsworth, J. (2022) Do-It-Together: ‘More-than-human collaborations’ for hacking the Anthropocene. Feral Feminisms, 10: 85-102.
• Cusworth, G. and Dodsworth, J. (2021) Using the 'good farmer' concept to explore agricultural attitudes to the provision of public goods. A case study of participants in an English agri-environment scheme. Agriculture and Human Values, 38: 929-941.

Reports

• Dodsworth, J. and Prager, K. (2021) Farmers' Experiences of RBAPS in Wensleydale: Changing Management Practices and Perceptions of Environmental Public Goods. Contracts2.0
• Dodsworth, J., Dutilly, C., Guédé, S. and Prager, K. (2020) Complexities in Collective Approaches: Traditional Management and Agri-Environmental Contracting in the Pyrenees (France) and Northwest England (UK). Contracts2.0