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This PhD thesis was developed in the context of contemporary challenges within water policy and governance; specifically the issue of managing diffuse pollution risk in fresh water catchments. As highlighted in the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) diffuse pollution poses a major risk in many European catchments where the sustainability of the ecosystems and water uses is compromised by intensive agriculture. The challenge for catchment management is the tricky nature of diffuse pollution. It is what you would term a ‘wicked problem’ or ‘Post Normal Science’ wherein the facts are uncertain, values are in dispute, stakes are high and decision-making is urgent (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993; Patterson et al., 2013). In response to the WFD the UK Government have proposed the Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) which represents a paradigmatic shift in approaches to water management; from a ‘command and control’ approach (i.e. the historic practice of direct regulation) to a participatory governance approach (i.e. devolution of power and involvement local stakeholders) (Dryzek, 2005; Müller-Grabherr et al., 2014). The project had two aims. The practical aim was to identify the drivers and barriers to delivering the CaBA. The academic aim was to employ the relational concept of ambiguity to explore why and how catchment stakeholders understand, frame and respond to diffuse pollution risk differently. In order to address these aims Timothy embedded himself in Loe Pool Forum (www.loepool.org) for four years. Loe Pool Forum (LPF) are a voluntary catchment partnership, based in West Cornwall, working to address the risk of diffuse pollution through taking a CaBA at the WFD waterbody scale. The methodology was directed by Participatory Action Research (PAR) and underpinned by ethnography. PAR enabled Timothy to work collaboratively to engender positive change within LPF while ethnography generated data upon how partnership and participatory working happens in practice. New insights into the geographies of risk stemmed from the application of ambiguity as the conceptual lever. Ambiguity is a dimension of uncertainty which accounts for the relational properties of risk. Ambiguity is defined as the simultaneous presence of multiple frames of reference about a certain phenomenon (Brugnach et al., 2007). Timothy examined ambiguity from three different directions. Firstly, where the ambiguities are in catchment management and how local partnerships negotiate them. Secondly, how risk frames are produced by both water scientists and the agricultural community. Thirdly, what the drivers and barriers are to delivering the CaBA. By thinking through risk relationally this thesis provides new insights into the practice of catchment management and the socio-cultural geographies around the water-environment.

This thesis adds a complex account to existing climate change engagement literature, which captures the ways that interactions with, and interpretations of, climate change emerge across the spaces and practices of day-to-day life. The empirical research for this thesis was based in Penryn and Falmouth, two small adjoining coastal towns located in the county of Cornwall, in the southwest of the UK. Fieldwork across a number of sites including schools, community groups and the local fishery engaged participants in a wide variety of research interactions. A combination of ethnographic and autoethnographic techniques were applied to produce complex, nuanced and personal accounts of interactions with and reflections on climate change that emerged in a day-to-day context. This study employed the innovative use of a personal research archive to facilitate the process of sense making across a body of highly detailed and contextual data. Through the use of thematic coding, links between data collected in diverse research encounters has been drawn together to produce meaningful narratives of climate change engagement in day-to-day life. These narratives capture the adaptive, imperfectly situated and inconsistent engagement responses that emerge as a result of the challenging nature of climate change and the inevitable, multiple pressures of the day-to-day context. The research approach taken in this study, and the findings set out in the thesis make contributions to three main areas of climate change engagement literature. Firstly, it explores the way that climate change is situated and understood in the context of day-to-day life. Secondly, it considers the implications of conceptualising climate change engagement as either a ‘process’ or a ‘state’. Finally, it extends existing analysis of ‘barriers to engagement’, locating them within the complexity of the day-to-day context and identifying them as part of essential interpretive iterations of engagement.

During the twentieth century, Cable & Wireless was the world’s biggest and most important telegraphy company, employing large numbers of people in stations across the world. Its network of submarine cables and wireless routes circumnavigated the globe, connecting Britain with the Empire. This thesis examines the ways in which the British Empire and modernity shaped Cable & Wireless’ corporate identity in order to understand the historical geography of the relationships between Empire, state, and modernity. Additionally, it investigates the role of design in the Company’s engagement with the discourses of modernity and imperialism. Historical Geography has not paid sufficient attention to the role of companies, in particular technology companies, as institutions of imperialism and instruments of modernity. The study of businesses within Historical Geography is in its infancy, and this thesis will provide a major contribution to this developing field. This thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach that sits at the intersection of three main disciplines: Historical Geography, Design History and Business History. This thesis examines how Cable & Wireless’ identity was produced, transmitted and consumed. This thesis is based on detailed research in Cable &Wireless’ corporate archive at Porthcurno, examining a wide range of visual and textual sources. This pays particular attention to how the Company designed its corporate identity through maps, posters, ephemera, corporate magazines and exhibitions. Drawing upon the conceptualizations of the Empire as a network, it argues that Cable & Wireless’ identity was networked like its submarine cables with decision-making power, money and identity traversing this network. This thesis seeks to place both the company and the concept of corporate identity within a broader historical and artistic context, tracing the development of both the company’s institutional narrative and the corporate uses of visual technologies. No study has been conducted into the corporate identity and visual culture of Cable & Wireless. This thesis not only provides a new dimension to knowledge and understanding of the historical operations of Cable & Wireless, but also makes a substantive contribution to the wider fields of Historical Geography, Business History, Design History and the study of visual culture.

This thesis engages with the intersection between the British state and corporations, governmentality, conflict and corporate power and historical geographies of networked communications during the Second World War From its formation in 1928 to nationalisation in 1946, Cable and Wireless were the overseas communications service for the British Government. Throughout the 1930s, intersecting sociopolitical networks were fostered between senior members of Head Office staff and representatives of various government departments – from the Cabinet, the Foreign Office and the intelligence services. Through these networks, an ostensibly private communications company was drawn into a close relationship with the British state that blurred the boundary between government and business. By utilizing the archival holdings of the Company, held at the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, Cornwall, Cable and Wireless’ war work will be detailed by examining three discrete but interrelated aspects. Theses are: first, overseas mobilization; second, domestic mobilization; and, finally, the mobilization of the body – of individual members of staff. In this thesis Cable and Wireless is configured as an institution in the Foucauldian sense and an examination of the exercise of governmental power follows. The physical network of Cable and Wireless is then configured as the conduit through which this power was exercised and disseminated. The central methodological contribution that this thesis makes is to discourses surrounding the notion of secrecy: how this is created and maintained, and how it shatters space into regions of knowledge and ignorance. Secrecy in this context also serves to empower some and dominate others. The final aspect of the research is to define and explore an alternative narrative to the Second World War: the central role that a private communications company played in furnishing the British Government with intelligence – of both a strategic and tactical nature – that was gleaned from the overseas network.

Through collaborative work with Cornwall Council, this AHRC funded project has produced an in-depth study of the design of secondary school outdoor landscapes linking two areas of research – landscape design and cultural geography. It explores the politics underpinning the design, construction, use and function of the outdoor landscapes of secondary schools in Cornwall, focusing on the extent of active participation of children and young people in these processes. Contemporary research has illustrated that outdoor spaces are essential to the development and wellbeing of young people as they are places in which children can play or have fun whilst they experiment with their identity, learn to socialise and participate in informal education. This thesis examines the role children and young people may have had and their potential in helping to formulate the design and implementation of outdoor spaces, alongside planners, garden designers, teachers and other interested parties. There are three linked aims. • Exploration of the politics underpinning the design, redesign, use and function of the outdoor landscapes of secondary schools. Here, “politics” refer to the complex negotiations between people, practicalities (policy priorities, management) and school strategic vision and ethos (including the role of student voice). • Understand more about the local spatialities of childhood of secondary school age children in order to: i) explain the politics of design; and ii) propose a more nuanced approach to understanding the varying needs and expectations of secondary school-age children. By participatory methods, interviews and observations I was able to note the use and functionality of the grounds by and for pupils, teachers and site managers. • Using an understanding of the politics of design in Cornwall’s secondary schools, and with greater awareness of the spatialities of childhood, develop recommendations for evaluation of secondary school outdoor landscapes via a ‘school’s biography’ approach. While policy-facing literature contemplates the educational function of school spaces in the secondary sector, this research broadens the view of children and young people’s relationship with secondary school outdoor spaces, emphasizing the relationality between groups of children, and children and others. This project proposes work which is attentive to how constructions of childhood are achieved in practice, beyond the contingencies of policy making and educational practices. The extent to which school grounds meet pupils’ needs is a reflection of school ethos and the relative status of children and young people in the decision making process.