Academic Career
• 2021- : University Teacher in Sustainable Geographies, Loughborough University
• 2018-2021: Associate Lecturer in Human Geography, Lancaster University
• 2018-2019: Research Associate, Lancaster University
Education
• 2014-2018: PhD, Lancaster University
• 2012-2013: MRes, Lancaster University
• 2007-2010: BA Dual Honours, Keele University
Leigh’s work looks broadly at China’s approach to sustainable development in the era of the Anthropocene. He is exploring the Chinese governments specific response to Climate Change and the challenges of sustainable development which has come in the form of ‘ecological civilization construction’. Leigh’s research has begun examining the novel conjunction (in both Chinese and English) of ‘ecological’ and ‘civilization’ which strongly resonates with the broader issues of an emergent Anthropocene, but with a distinctively Chinese twist unfamiliar to still-dominant Western ways of thinking. It also points directly to major debates about ‘planetary urbanism’ and the future socio-ecological metabolisms amongst city, countryside and ‘wilderness’ (terrestrial and maritime). Leigh has begun to explore these themes and ideas through his analyses of Chinese alternative food networks – those small-scale and ecological food networks that rely on direct-exchange between producers and consumers (i.e. CSA farms).
Leigh teaches broadly across topics looking at the geographies of Sustainable Development and the Anthropocene.
- Martindale, L. (2021) From Land Consolidation to Alternative Food Networks: China’s Dynamic System of Agri-Rural Innovation, Journal of Rural Studies, 82: 404-416.
- Martindale, L. (2020) ‘I will know it when I taste it’: Food Materialities and Social Media in Chinese Alternative Food Networks Agriculture and Human Values, 38: 365–380.
- Martindale, L; Matacena, R; Beacham, J (2018) Varieties of Alterity: Alternative Food Networks in the UK, Italy and China, Sociologia Urbana e Rurale 115suppl: 27-41.
- Martindale, L (2015) ‘Understanding Humans in the Anthropocene; Finding answers in Geo-engineering and Transition Towns’, Environment and Planning D 33(5): 907-924.