Change, told through the people living it
Research-led narrative writing, rooted in emotion and human stakes. I tell stories with teams across community-led development, policy and climate.
Change, told through the people living it
Research-led narrative writing, rooted in emotion and human stakes. I tell stories with teams across community-led development, policy and climate.
Change, told through the people living it
Research-led narrative writing, rooted in emotion and human stakes. I tell stories with teams across community-led development, policy and climate.
Whose lives, which economies and ecologies does your work touch, and how?
Do you have insightful analysis but need the story to show context and reveal nuance? Or does your team have strong data and wants the account that carries the thesis? Are you looking for a researcher-writer to frame your evidence in stories of governance, climate and lived reality?
What I bring
Clear, persuasive, story-driven pieces that synthesise contested narratives and sensitive issues. Work crafted from organisational materials or original ideas according to the needs of civil society, commercial, or policy teams. I’m available for commissions or staff roles, remote or in the field. I’m open to in-office time.
Policy & research content
Action briefs, state-of-play reports and investment priorities making frameworks felt.
Institutional reporting
Directives-to-field realities carried through donor briefings and project roadmaps.
Advocacy & public campaigns
Community toolkits and leadership point-of-view pieces tracking the shifts beneath the surface.
Editing & co-shaping
Collaborative revisions ensuring your technical strengths land with clarity, coherence and persuasion.
Original, research-led features
Participant-driven storytelling that invites donors and policymakers to feel how communities influence what happens next.
What I bring
Clear, persuasive, story-driven pieces that synthesise contested narratives and sensitive issues. Work crafted from organisational materials or original ideas according to the needs of civil society, commercial, or policy teams. I’m available for commissions or staff roles, remote or in the field. I’m open to in-office time.
Policy & research content
Action briefs, state-of-play reports and investment priorities making frameworks felt.
Institutional reporting
Directives-to-field realities carried through donor briefings and project roadmaps.
Advocacy & public campaigns
Community toolkits and leadership point-of-view pieces tracking the shifts beneath the surface.
Editing & co-shaping
Collaborative revisions ensuring your technical strengths land with clarity, coherence and persuasion.
Original, research-led features
Participant-driven storytelling that invites donors and policymakers to feel how communities influence what happens next.
In Somalia, global issues turn on women’s sovereignty
Save Somali Women and Children (SSWC) has demonstrated women’s leadership in the face of sexual violence for 34 years while rebuilding governance. Now a 50% funding cut threatens their work and undermines efforts to mitigate climate breakdown’s global repercussions.
In Somalia, global issues turn on women’s sovereignty
Save Somali Women and Children (SSWC) has demonstrated women’s leadership in the face of sexual violence for 34 years while rebuilding governance. Now a 50% funding cut threatens their work and undermines efforts to mitigate climate breakdown’s global repercussions.
The narrative challenge
The challenge was to trace how women and young girls’ sovereignty, a violent history in the Horn of Africa and climate mitigation intersect. Then tell that story. It was to determine why investment in collective, climate-resilient peacebuilding alongside governance in Somalia is a priority for global actors.
I asked what happens if we neglect East Africa’s dryland economies and the millennia-old pastoral communities holding the line. Where the people shaping decisions see themselves in the evolving story, insights emerge on how they allocate, fund and act.
The narrative challenge
The challenge was to trace how women and young girls’ sovereignty, a violent history in the Horn of Africa and climate mitigation intersect. Then tell that story. It was to determine why investment in collective, climate-resilient peacebuilding alongside governance in Somalia is a priority for global actors.
I asked what happens if we neglect East Africa’s dryland economies and the millennia-old pastoral communities holding the line. Where the people shaping decisions see themselves in the evolving story, insights emerge on how they allocate, fund and act.
In Somalia, global issues turn on women’s sovereignty
Save Somali Women and Children (SSWC) has demonstrated women’s leadership in the face of sexual violence for 34 years while rebuilding governance. Now a 50% funding cut threatens their work and undermines efforts to mitigate climate breakdown’s global repercussions.
The challenge was to trace how women and young girls’ sovereignty, a violent history in the Horn of Africa and climate mitigation intersect. Then tell that story. It was to determine why investment in collective, climate-resilient peacebuilding alongside governance in Somalia is a priority for global actors.
I asked what happens if we neglect East Africa’s dryland economies and the millennia-old pastoral communities holding the line. Where the people shaping decisions see themselves in the evolving story, insights emerge on how they allocate, fund and act.
What the piece informs
What the piece informs
The feature portrays a women-led team grounded in protection, supported by international partners, working alongside federal officials and clan-based communities. The piece introduces fresh solutions for their collectively-rooted conversations with donors and policymakers around shared priorities. They include cross-border herder mobility, pastoralist-merchant trade agreements and the balancing of soft power through closing funding gaps.
I looked beyond clan, nomadic pastoralist and humanitarian framings to deeper structures in motion from colonial-drawn borders to the Red Sea trade route. I balanced organisational accountability boundaries with my own research and editorial independence. SSWC published the 2,477-word feature across their platforms; a women’s network newsletter will carry it further.
Published in collaboration with SSWC.
The feature portrays a women-led team grounded in protection, supported by international partners, working alongside federal officials and clan-based communities. The piece introduces fresh solutions for their collectively-rooted conversations with donors and policymakers around shared priorities. They include cross-border herder mobility, pastoralist-merchant trade agreements and the balancing of soft power through closing funding gaps.
I looked beyond clan, nomadic pastoralist and humanitarian framings to deeper structures in motion from colonial-drawn borders to the Red Sea trade route. I balanced organisational accountability boundaries with my own research and editorial independence. SSWC published the 2,477-word feature across their platforms; a women’s network newsletter will carry it further.
Published in collaboration with SSWC.
Rooting evidence in human experience
Storytelling weaves facts, figures and numbers through the emotional arc whether scenes, analysis or exposition, each building on the last.
How I work
These practices underpin my work with teams from a feature to a policy brief
Story ideas and proposals
I carry out information calls and research to conceive of original story ideas shaped to the needs
Information gathering
Participant-driven, context-informed interviews with community members, frontline staff, policymakers, scholar-practitioners and donors; work through interpreters; research synthesise across disciplines.
Narrative writing & editing
My first goal is clarity. Then I try to disappear. Through the lives of the people shaping events, the reader traverses scenes or flowing exposition (analytical/explanatory passages). The ending looks to what may come next.
Imagery
Guide the visual arc with thematic or symbolic image suggestions; select, edit and prepare all photos for web publication.
Fact-checking
Verify claims through a line by line review, triangulate the research and document the proof.
Operational security
Secure pathways, including encrypted communication, protected storage and restricted access.
How I work
These practices underpin my work with teams from a feature to a policy brief
Information gathering
Participant-driven, context-informed interviews with community members, frontline staff, policymakers, scholar-practitioners and donors; work through interpreters; research synthesise across disciplines.
Narrative writing
My first goal is clarity. Then I try to disappear. Through the lives of the people shaping events, the reader traverses scenes or flowing exposition (analytical/explanatory passages). The ending looks to what may come next.
Imagery
Guide the visual arc with thematic or symbolic image suggestions; select, edit and prepare all photos for web publication.
Fact-checking
Verify claims through a line by line review, triangulate the research and document the proof.
Operational security
Secure pathways, including encrypted communication, protected storage and restricted access.
It’s good to have you here. I’m James.
Close to halfway through life, I followed the need to write. I bring experience tracing how unfinished stories threaten and shape governance, climate responses and on-the-ground change.
Teams looking to express their insights through narratives will find me in Berlin. Earlier, in Barcelona’s wine trade, I lived themes of agriculture, economy and tradition. A shared daily life carried connections with communities from Latin America and the Maghreb. In my youth I unearthed Neolithic to early Christian outlines on archaeological sites across Ireland.
I’m from Wales, Britain, with Welsh-Irish origins. Here, in ancient valleys, coal fuelled, willingly or not, one of history’s most paradoxical systemic changes: the Industrial Revolution. Today a marginalised but vivid people guard a deep sense of belonging and identity. They know the meaning of a just transition.
Languages
I write in British English and American English. I speak Spanish, and am conversant in Catalan, Portuguese and German.
It’s good to have you here. I’m James.
Close to halfway through life, I followed the need to write. I bring experience tracing how unfinished stories threaten and shape governance, climate responses and on-the-ground change.
Teams looking to express their insights through narratives will find me in Berlin. Earlier, in Barcelona’s wine trade, I lived themes of agriculture, economy and tradition. A shared daily life carried connections with communities from Latin America and the Maghreb. In my youth I unearthed Neolithic to early Christian outlines on archaeological sites across Ireland.
I’m from Wales, Britain, with Welsh-Irish origins. Here, in ancient valleys, coal fuelled, willingly or not, one of history’s most paradoxical systemic changes: the Industrial Revolution. Today a marginalised but vivid people guard a deep sense of belonging and identity. They know the meaning of a just transition.
Languages
I write in British English and American English. I speak Spanish, and am conversant in Catalan, Portuguese and German.
It’s good to have you here. I’m James.
Close to halfway through life, I followed the need to write. I bring experience tracing how unfinished stories threaten and shape governance, climate responses and on-the-ground change.
Teams looking to express their insights through narratives will find me in Berlin. Earlier, in Barcelona’s wine trade, I lived themes of agriculture, economy and tradition. A shared daily life carried connections with communities from Latin America and the Maghreb. In my youth I unearthed Neolithic to early Christian outlines on archaeological sites across Ireland.
I’m from Wales, Britain, with Welsh-Irish origins. Here, in ancient valleys, coal fuelled, willingly or not, one of history’s most paradoxical systemic changes: the Industrial Revolution. Today a marginalised but vivid people guard a deep sense of belonging and identity. They know the meaning of a just transition.
Languages
I write in British English and American English. I speak Spanish, and am conversant in Catalan, Portuguese and German.