Dr Sarah Knight
School of Science, Engineering & Environment
Current positions
Research Fellow
Biography
I am a Research Fellow in Greenspace & Health at the University of Salford. I am an interdisciplinary researcher specialising in nature-society relationships and geospatial approaches. I am interested in employing quantitative, qualitative and participatory methods to study GIS, green and blue spaces, health & well-being inequalities & ecology. I currently work on the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project GreenME - advancing Greencare in Europe: an integrated multi-scalar approach for the expansion of nature-based therapies to improve Mental health Equity.
Prior to joining Salford, I was an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of York, investigating the links between socioeconomic and environmental inequalities and nature connectedness. Through this, I led the ESRC-funded Green & Gender-just Cities project, which worked to build knowledge and shape policy on the design and decision-making for healthy, green and just cities. I have also worked on a number of other collaborative projects, including a Green Social Prescribing evaluation across West Yorkshire, and the EU-funded Horizon 2020 PERICLES project, managing the online mapping platform to crowd-source coastal and maritime cultural heritage data.
I completed an ESRC White Rose funded PhD in 2020 on measuring the relationship between the natural environment and subjective well-being. This involved using regression methods to explore the determinants of human well-being from green/bluespace, air pollution, and biodiversity datasets at small-scale UK geographies. I am also a Data Impact Fellow with the UK Data Service. Prior to my PhD, I worked in the environmental conservation sector for nearly 10 years in organisations such as UNEP-WCMC, FERA and ZSL.
Areas of Research
Greenspace, bluespace, GIS, ecology, health & well-being, nature, social inequalities, gender, nature connectedness, nature-based solutions, participatory GIS, green social prescribing, cities.