Dr James Weldon

(he/him)

Publication

• Date
• Type

Research

Tree Diseases:

My ESRC-funded PhD and Postdoctoral research focuses tree diseases and the long term responses to disease outbreaks. My research centres on: (1) Efforts to breed, return and preserve elm trees in UK, (2) The restoration efforts responding to ash dieback in Devon. I ask what specifically these conservation efforts are trying to conserve/preserve and why the loss of trees matters to those involved in their conservation. Through interviews, participant-observation and documentary analysis I am investigating how these conservation efforts are shaped by perceptions of what species belong where, the multiple objects of care in treescape restoration and the question of what makes an appropriate proxy for ‘lost’ species. Additionally, I am interested in artistic responses to speices loss, and the ways they document changing landscapes and memorialize lost trees.

Planetary Health:

I am an editor co-leading the production of the Routledge International Handbook of Planetary Health, a book critically assessing regional approaches to the intersection of climate change, ecosystem health and human health issues. The book aims to foreground knowledge produced by Global South and indigenous researchers and put inequalities at the centre of analysis.

Transparent Food Supply Chains: 

I previously worked on TITAN, a project involving multiple academic, industry and NGO partners. In line with the European Green Deal the project focuses on the role of policy tools in enabling food system transparency through novel digital technologies (AI, Blockchain, Internet of Things).

Hybrid Organisms:

I am currently developing postdoctoral research proposal on hybrid organisms. A core finding from my PhD is the fact that many participants challenged the mainstream perception of hybrids as an unvalued and threatening impurity by embracing the process of native-nonnative hybridisation in their restoration efforts. This allowed conservationists to work towards creating future-orientated, non-linear novel ecosystems that embrace the movement of genes between species rather than retaining the purity of historic species. I will build on this work by developing a postdoctoral research project titled Hybrid Futures. This project will build on my interrogation of the species concept in my PhD to ask: what is the wider role of novel hybrids entities in building an ecologically healthy future? As such, the proposed project will evaluate the status of hybrid organisms in contemporary conservation and challenge conventional understandings of the value of hybrid beings.

Teaching

Graduate Tutor

Developing Research Methods: CP0273

Research Dissertation: CP0383

Border Spaces: Identities, Cultures and Politics in a Globalising World: CP0152

Graduate Demonstrator

Researching Contemporary Issues in Geography and Planning (South Africa): CP0380

Researching Contemporary Issues in Geography and Planning (Netherlands): CP0380

Heritage, Regeneration and Inequality (Liverpool): CP0277 

Biography

WGSSS Postdoctoral Research Associate, Cardiff University, October 2026 - ongoing.

Research Assistant, Cardiff University, TITAN, February 2026 – September 2026.

Research Associate, Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences, February 2025 – March 2026.

Visiting Researcher (funded by WGSSS), The Greenhouse Centre for Environmental Humanities, Universtiy of Stavanger, 2025

PhD Cardiff University, School of Geography and Planning, 2022 - 2026.

MSc Social Science Research Methods Cardiff University, 2021 - 2022.

MA Social Anthropology University of Edinburgh, 2015 - 2020.

Honours and awards

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (awarded through the WGSSS)

WGSSS Overseas Instiutional Visit Funding (for Visiting Researcher position at The Greenhouse Centre for Environmental Humanities)

ESRC 1+3 PhD Studentship (awared through the WGSSS)

Professional memberships

Associate Fellow of Higher Education Academy 2024

Academic positions

Editor - Agoriad: A journal of spatial theory 

Speaking engagements

The creative abilities of trees: producing an ‘authentic’ disease resistant replacement for absent elm. RGS conference 2025.

Memorialising trees: emotional responses to species ‘lost’ to disease. The Greenhouse Centre for Environmental Humanities Research Talks 2025.

Attending to tree species ‘lost’ to disease: nostalgia, memorialisation and life after death. Cardiff University, School of Geography and Planning, Social and Cultural Research Group talk 2025. 

Attending to tree species ‘lost’ to disease: memorialization and life after death. ASLE-UKI postgraduate conference 2024

Hestercombe House TEST BED Panel Discussion 2024.

Replacing 'lost' trees: aesthetics, ecology and the desired states of treescape restoration. RGS Postgraduate Forum Mid-Term Conference 2024. 

Responding to loss: what is 'the right tree' and 'the right place' when replanting after disease. CCRI Winter School 2024.

Tree disease and the cultural wellbeing of impacted communities: valued and unvalued trees in authentic treescapes. ASA conference 2023.

Committees and reviewing

PGR conference fund committee