My research and policy interests lie at the intersection of energy geographies, socio-spatial inequality and climate mitigation. I am driven by a deep commitment to confront infrastructural and environmental injustices across the world, focusing on energy poverty in particular.

I lead the People, Place and Energy Research Centre at the University of Manchester. More widely, I am involved as a Co-Investigator in the Energy Demand Research Centre (leading the Place-Based Retrofit and Regeneration Models project, and the Energy Security Challenge), and a Co-Investigator in the Centre for Joined-Up Sustainability Transformations  (leading the Social and Built Infrastructures Theme).

I have undertaken extensive advocacy and policy-orientated work in collaboration with the United Nations, World Bank, International Energy Agency and the European Union. I co-founded and chaired the European Union Energy Poverty Observatory, as well as the ENGAGER Action, the largest international network of energy poverty experts and practitioners.

My research involves quantitative and qualitative data analyses of energy consumption, vulnerability, consumer engagement, policy formulation and effectiveness in various European, Asian and African states as well as the UK. I have also examined the wider lived experience and political consequences associated with social inequalities in cities. My work in these domains is presented in the monographs Energy Poverty (Palgrave, 2018), Retrofitting the City (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2016) and Energy Poverty in Eastern Europe (Ashgate/Routledge 2007) as well as two co-edited collections (Research Companion to Energy Geographies, Energy Poverty and Vulnerability, Routledge, 2017) and a textbook (Energy and Society, Routledge,2018).

Underpinning much of my work is a desire to develop innovative methods for conceptualizing and representing space and territory (New Worlds from Old Texts, Oxford University Press, 2016). 

A grantee of the European Research Council between 2013 and 2018 (via the EVALUATE project), I have received research funding for more than 70 reserach projects supported by the European Union, UK research councils, as well as various corporate and charitable bodies. 

I have held visiting university appointments in Bergen, Gdansk, Prague, Berlin, Stockholm, Bruges, Rotterdam, Skopje and Brisbane. I was a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church College, Oxford, between 2004 and 2007, having previously been awarded a Larkinson Scholarship at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, as well as the University of Oxford’s Scatcherd and Dulverton Scholarships.

I was one of the founding members of the Royal Geographical Society’s Energy Geographies Research Group, and I have sat or currently sit on the Editorial Boards of Energy and Buildings, Solar Energy Advances, European Urban and Regional Studies, Energies, Energy Research and Social Science, Nature Scientific Reports, Bulletin of Geography and Acta Geobalcanica. 

In 2019, I was named an ‘ordinary hero’ in the European Commission’s EU Protects campaign, for my efforts to combat energy poverty and reduce social inequality. In 2021, my research was shortlisted for a Times Higher Education award, as well as a Falling Walls prize.

I have been actively engaged as a research grant evaluator for over 20 years, including as Vice-Chair of the ESRC's Grant Asessment Panel A, the European Commission and National Science Foundation, as well as research organisations and councils in Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, France, Ireland, Qatar, Canada and others.

My key current and past academic posts include:

• Since 2013: Professor of Geography, University of Manchester and Director of the People and Energy Programme, Manchester Urban Institute;
• 2007-2012: Professor of Human Geography and Research Group Leader (previously Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Human Geography), University of Birmingham;
• 2004-2007: Senior Research Associate, School of Geography, University of Oxford;
• 2003-2005: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London.

•2017: Habilitation, University of Krakow;

•2009: Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching for Higher Education, University of Birmingham;

•2003: DPhil, School of Geography, University of Oxford;

•2000: M.Sc. (Distinction) in Environmental Change and Management, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford;

•1999: B.A. Geography, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Skopje.