Jessica Chapman is a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholar, based in the School of Environmental Sciences at University of East Anglia, as part of the Critical Decade for Climate Change programme. Her research focuses on; understanding the efficacy of soil recarbonisation interventions, the role of soil carbon markets and the soil carbon policy landscape (specifically the UK Soil Carbon Code) using interdisciplinary methods (soil carbon modelling, semi-structured interviews, choice experiments and SWOT analysis).
Jessica holds a BA Honours Law degree from Carleton University in Canada (2018) and an MSc degree in Climate Change, Development and Policy from University of Sussex / Institute of Development Studies (2020). As part of her MSc dissertation, Jessica undertook a work placement at Brighton & Hove Food Partnership, a UK non-profit organisation. In post, she researched links between sustainable food production and sustainable land management and translated her findings into informing grant proposals and influencing policy decisions at the local scale.
Following her MSc, Jessica gained experiential knowledge on organic soil management and was involved in agricultural community outreach, engagement and voluntary work through working on regenerative farms in both the UK and Canada. On these organic farms, she delivered hands-on CO2 reduction projects through implementing organic soil management strategies, permaculture approaches and native tree and hedgerow planting. Jessica has also advocated against urban expansion into critically endangered soil in Ontario, Canada for local organic farming communities. She drafted legal deputations, which provided a re-assessment on land use planning proposals that better integrated provincial agricultural mapping systems, and aligned with the region’s 2020 Climate Change Action Plan. This work led to successfully influencing planning decisions by challenging a panel of Regional Councilors.
Additionally, Jessica has worked as a free-lance environmental editor at a ghostwriting service company in Toronto, Canada.
