Jonathan Carruthers-Jones

"wealth of skills and learning experiences"

In 2015, with the continued support and guidance of Centre for Mountain Studies, Jonathan was appointed as a Marie Curie Sklodowska Research Fellow under the Innovative Training Network (ITN) ‘Environmental Humanities for a Concerned Europe’.

He is now based at Leeds University in the School of Earth & Environment and will receive ongoing professional training as well as follow a PhD funded research programme. The PhD will examine issues related to wilderness and conservation such as the interdisciplinary challenges of ‘Connectivity Conservation’.

In this research he will explore the concept of ‘landscape resistance’ to habitat rewilding and to extinct native species reintroductions from a humanities focus and the interrelations of this with traditional ecological and social science approaches.

He continues also as a member of the research team at the Wildland Research Institute.

In 2013, Jonathan, who also works as a mountain guide in the French Pyrenees, won the Postgraduate Dissertation Prize of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)’s Planning and Environment Research Group.  The title of his dissertation was 'The Selection, Evaluation and Testing of Methods for the Identification of Priority Connectivity in Conservation Areas: A Case Study of the Pyrenees’.

"The MSc provided me with a wealth of skills and learning experiences. One of the reasons I chose the course was because the modular structure allowed me to focus in on my particular areas of interest - mountains, biodiversity and sustainable approaches to conservation.  The high quality of the staff teaching on the course meant that I knew I would be learning the state of the art in those subjects.

Before I started the course I had been walking through the mountains a lot. Working as a guide you begin to understand the reality of life in the mountains and what is actually happening. You also meet a lot of people working there - farmers, shepherds, tourists, refuge owners - and learn what challenges they face.  I was therefore looking to learn on the MSc how in practical terms I could actually go about making the changes that it seemed were necessary in my local environment. The MSc has given me the tools to do this.

The lecturers have always been available if I needed specific help or advice. This is one of the advantages of being part of focused research centre such as the Centre for Mountain Studies. The other benefit of this is that they are all working in the fields that they teach so they bring genuine insights and real world examples into the teaching process.

One unforeseen result of this was that the Director of the Centre for Mountain Studies, Professor Martin Price, submitted my dissertation for the 2013 Royal Geographical Society’s (with IBG) Planning and Environment Research Group (PERG) prize. The prize is an annual postgraduate award for the best Masters dissertation in the United Kingdom in environmental planning, policy and governance.  Without my tutors I would never have known such a prize existed and winning that prize was a great way finish to my time at the Centre for Mountain Studies.

My lecturers and supervisors have been and continue to be hugely supportive in arranging for me to go to conferences and to meet researchers who have interests similar to mine. This has made a big difference in the few months since I graduated and I have already developed collaborations which have led to work related to my master's thesis. These collaborations will no doubt also lead to further work and research projects in the future."