Jayne Glass

I am a geographer with specific interests in land use policy, environmental governance and rural community resilience. I have extensive experience of participatory qualitative research, with high policy impact. I often work with stakeholders within and outside academia, most recently in the LANDPATHS project that focuses on multifunctional landscapes in Sweden. In recognition of my postgraduate teaching and supervision, I was Honorary Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh (2016-2024).

I have always had a deep interest in the interactions between people and the natural environment. The resilience of rural communities has been a long-term focus of my work, particularly in the context of land tenure and the power relations between different actors and institutions.

I studied geography as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford (2000-2003) and received an MSc in Environmental Sustainability from the University of Edinburgh in 2006. I began my research on Scottish land ownership and land reform in 2007 as a PhD student at the Centre for Mountain Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI), with my doctorate awarded by the University of Aberdeen. This work led to a postdoc in 2011 and many more years of high policy impact research at UHI on Scottish land reform and land use policy (awarded a 4* impact case in the UK Research Excellent Framework in 2021) and two books published by Edinburgh University Press: Lairds, Land and Sustainability: Scottish perspectives on upland management (2013) and Land Reform in Scotland: history, law and policy (2020). I was also appointed by Scottish Government as an external advisor on wild deer management (2017-2019).

I joined the Rural Policy Centre at Scotland's Rural College in 2019, where I continued to deliver a wide range of applied and theoretical research for government and other public agencies. My research at SRUC included high impact work for the Council of Europe on rural young people, and research on rural poverty in the UK (including child poverty). A significant part of the rural poverty work was published in my third book: Rural Poverty Today - experiences of social exclusion in rural Britain (Policy Press, 2023).

In 2021-2022, I was a visiting researcher in the Natural Resources and Sustainable Development programme in the Department of Earth Sciences at Uppsala University. I became a researcher in the programme in late 2022. In recognition of my teaching at the University of Edinburgh, I have been a Honorary Lecturer in the School of Geosciences since 2016.

In 2023, I finished the third edition of Managing Scotland's Environment with Charles Warren from the University of St Andrews. This fully revised and updated book about environmental management in Scotland was published by Edinburgh University Press in early 2024.

All of my publications are listed below and it is possible to follow my work on LinkedIn and Twitter: @DrJayneGlass Since 2025, I am an Associate Editor for Ambio.

Current projects

Conflicts between conservation and production - a new research network at Uppsala University that aims to catalyse innovative thinking and problem-solving for conflicts between biodiversity conservation and the
productive uses of landscapes (e.g. agriculture, forestry, energy). Funded by the Uppsala University Conflicting Objectives Research Nexus (UUniCORN).

LANDPATHS: Future multifunctional landscapes in Sweden - a large research programme that aims to promote multifunctional landscapes that are both biodiversity rich and provide multiple benefits for a range of actors. Funded by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, in collaboration with the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management.

NEXOGENESIS: Streamlining water-related policies - a European collaborative project funded under the Horizon 2020 programme, focussing on improving policies related to the water-energy-food-ecosystem (WEFE) nexus.

MultiForSe: Multi-use forestry, private forest ownerships and social learning networks - research on family forest owners as grassroots agents for alternative forest management practices in Sweden. Funded by Formas, the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development.

Current doctoral students

Anna Berg Grimstad - Exploring synergies and barriers between political strategies for climate change mitigation and biodiversity protection.

Björn Eriksson - Oceans, contested: Understanding the origin, development and resolution of global conflicts over marine environments.

Nairomi Eriksson - Navigating conflicts in Swedish land-use governance: local challenges to fulfilling EU goals of nature restoration and nature-based solutions.

Fanny Möckel - Deliberative approaches in support of multifunctional landscape governance (within the LANDPATHS programme).

Lorna Pate (Scotland's Rural College, UK) - Understanding farmers' antibiotic use on dairy farms.