Charlie Gray


I live in Bradford (much-maligned, but actually really inspiring city) in West Yorkshire UK and work as an Ecologist/Ethnobotanist part-time, and whilst this is enjoyable and fits around looking after our 3-year old son, I have always wanted to conduct fieldwork in Mexico.  
I am attempting to juggle part-time work, part-time PhD and still have enough energy to keep up with a 3 year old.  I have worked self-employed on-and-off for many years and built up a consultancy linking biocultural diversity, art, local food growing and community development.  
Having spent time in Mexico in 2003 I returned and completed the MSc in Ethnobotany at the University of Kent.  In 2007 I completed an MPhil in Urban Ethnobiology in Bradford and completed this part-time whilst also working in an admin role in the NHS.  I then left to have my son.  Whilst raising my son at home I began looking into Permaculture (a seemingly less formal) approach to designing sustainable systems for human settlements, which I feel complements Ethnobotany well.  
In fact it was a campesino in Oaxaca, Mexico who first inspired me to study permaculture, as he was asking me how to improve productivity of home gardens.  There were few remaining inhabitants, the majority of who are older and less able to farm.  Living in within a mountain village in Mexico outmigration of younger generations to the US is huge.  I seemed to remember there was this p word that delved into low tech solutions with minimum resources, so started to study permaculture.
I have an interest in urban ethnobiology and the acculturation of traditional systems, as well as creating regenerative systems in the West where overconsumption dominates.    I am a Co-Director of a Community Supported Agriculture scheme on an allotment site to transform it from derelict to producing food for the local community.  I am the founder of a recent initiative called Grow Bradford, which aims to link people and projects around the themes of biocultural diversity and food growing using an artistic approach.  I share an allotment plot with friends and am part of some really solid voluntary and activist networks in Bradford.  
I am also interested in traditional and integrated systems of resource management in multifunctional landscapes and hope to conduct fieldwork in a women’s cooperative in a forestry community in Oaxaca, Mexico.  I have been visiting Mexico since 2003, and have volunteered in the Ethnobotanical garden in Oaxaca as well as spent time in rural and indigenous communities in Oaxaca and Chiapas.
I hope to conduct field research near my husband’s family in the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca and also give my son the opportunity to experience the mountains during his childhood.
As a permaculturist I believe in small and slow solutions, so my approach to this PhD fits!  I think as a part-time student it will take me some time to complete, but I hope to do it by integrating work and study with managing a regenerative home life.