I am a sociologist with expertise in memory, heritage, water and bluespaces, and qualitative methodology. My research has a sustained commitment to making sense of messy presents, difficult pasts and uncertain futures, through qualitative, collaborative methods that instigate change. This ‘global-civic’ orientation runs through my ethnographic work on outdoor swimmers navigating polluted waters, to my global engagement with communities reckoning with the legacies of conflict and colonialism.