Email address: lmansfield2@glos.ac.uk
Lois is a Visiting Professor at CCRI and Emeritus at the University of Cumbria with over 30 years of experience specialising in upland agriculture, multiple capitals and stakeholder partnerships.
Biography
Lois has always worked at the interface between academia and professional land management, where she has supported a range of organisations to make better upland management decisions through knowledge exchange. Her expertise centres around holistic integrated upland management enabling a better balance between agriculture and other resource users.
Previously she was the Director of the Centre for National Parks & Protected Areas based at the Ambleside campus of the University of Cumbria, where she was also the Site Director and taught undergraduates. She continues to conduct PhD supervision.
Lois now runs her own consultancy (Environmentors Ltd) that specialises in complex issue resolution for rural organisations, communities or individuals. Her current work focuses on developing and calculating a Multiple Capitals Account for a northern landscape charity along with publication of a book exploring this topic (June 2025).
In a voluntary capacity, Lois supports the Lake District World Heritage Site as the convenor of the Specialist Advisory Group and the cultural agricultural elements of the operation of the 2020-2006 management plan. She also sits on the Board of Europarc Atlantic Isles representing higher education interests.
Qualifications
- PhD Agricultural Geography, Coventry University, 1996
- MA Rural Studies, University of Guelph, Ontario, 1990
Membership to Professional Bodies
- Board member Europarc Atlantic Isles
- Fellow of Royal Geographical Society
- World Heritage UK
- Senior Fellow Higher Education Academy
Teaching and Research
As part of her role with CCRI, Lois is helping to manage and oversee the SATOCONN Reconnections project, a consortium of seven universities supported by the Japanese Research Institute for Humanities and Nature in Kyoto. This international project has six living labs located in the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal and Japan (2), which are exploring how to make upland cultural systems more resilient. The project involves participatory action-oriented research to help sustain and strengthen longstanding human-nature interactions in high-nature-value landscapes to benefit global biodiversity and climate goals.
Other research Lois is involved in focuses developing and testing a Multiple Capitals Accounting methodology for rural sites. This process values all the benefits society generates for rural land management beyond just natural capital to include human, social, cultural and financial capital.