Charlotte Chivers

Biography

Charlotte’s research interests relate to co-design, participatory methods, soil health, water quality, landscape-scale nature recovery, agri-environmental policy, and science communication.

Since joining the CCRI in September 2020, Charlotte has led a Defra-funded ELM test and trial, which co-designed a long-term agreement template for delivering landscape-scale nature recovery. She is also leading the co-design aspects of a citizen-led pilot project for monitoring soil health and water quality, as part of CaSTCo. Charlotte worked on Flourishing Floodplains, developing farmer case studies and is also involved in ongoing Defra-funded research projects, including those evaluating agri-environment schemes.

Science communication and stakeholder engagement is another area of expertise. She leads the dissemination and communication work package for EU-funded MINAGRIS, which is exploring the impacts of micro- and nano-plastics on agricultural soil health. Charlotte co-leads the same work package for EU-UKRI funded TERRASAFE, which is working with local communities across Southern Europe and North Africa to co-test innovations for combatting desertification. She is also involved in the dissemination, communication, and policy aspects of SPRINT, another EU-funded project which is investigating the impacts of pesticides on human, animal, and environmental health. She was previously involved in EU-funded SoilCare.

Charlotte has around 10 years’ experience in designing and conducting research surveys and transitioned into interdisciplinary social science from a natural sciences background, which includes research into livestock parasites. She completed her PhD at the University of Exeter within the Centre for Rural Policy Research. Her PhD research explored the efficacy of farm advice surrounding diffuse water pollution from agriculture. She was also involved in LANDWISE project (natural flood management). She has also worked on an NFU project exploring farmers’ requirements of ELMs policy and a NICRE-funded project exploring the resilience of small-medium rural enterprises. Lastly, she worked on a Defra-funded project exploring scenarios for introducing a vaccination for controlling bovine tuberculosis, which related to her previous research experience in livestock health.

Her research skills include mixed methods research, co-design, qualitative and quantitative analysis, SPSS, NVivo, ArcGIS, interviewing, conducting online survey questionnaires, and disseminating research findings.