Working together for everyone

Dr Steve Taylor is director of the University of the Highlands and Islands’ Centre for Recreation and Tourism Research. Much of his work is centred on collaborating with international partners on sustainable tourism projects– the centre is currently involved in major projects exploring the injustices of tourism and regenerative tourism, as well as how the great outdoors can positively affect the wellbeing of young people. Steve’s scholarly output has recently been on the slow adventure marketing concept, adventure recreation and cultural heritage tourism. In his spare time he can found wandering the highlands on foot or on his bike.

Dr Nick Barnes works for NHS Highland CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) within the fields of psychiatry and psychotherapy for children and young people across the Highlands of Scotland as well as holding Honorary academic posts with Universities of Aberdeen and University College London. Nick is also the Sustainability Champion for the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) in Scotland, and co-facitator of the ecoCAMHS network within the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Faculty for the RCPsych, a network that seeks to promote climate change aware and nature based practice within Child and Adolescent Mental health support. Through both clinical practice and academic research, Nick has been keen to find ways of supporting those young people who struggle to access and/or engage with services, building on the growing evidence of how being in green and blue spaces, and working through nature connection can have a significant impact not only on an individual's wellbeing, but also on the entrenched health inequalities that perpetuate so many of the struggles for young people today.

Gill Hubbard is a health services behavioural scientist at the University of Dundee who is interested in improving behaviours to improve health and wellbeing. She is passionate about relational approaches to working with individuals and communities and applying models of public participation and patient and public involvement and community co-production. Her research activity is concerned with evidencing, through co-creation interventions, how we might tackle health inequalities and enhance empowerment and resilience for communities and individuals. Her methodological expertise is in qualitative and mixed methods applied to co-created design, implementation and evaluation of complex interventions, including feasibility and pilot studies, full RCTs and process evaluations.