Dr Hannah Rudman FBCS FRSA’s academic work focuses on how nature tech and data innovations can help the natural economy sector address the Grand Challenges we face – climate change, food safety and security, loss of biodiversity, and pollution. She is currently Honorary Fellow in the Centre for Sustainable Forests and Landscapes at The University of Edinburgh.
Hannah is passionate about applied action research’s impact into policy and professional and enterprise practice for nature positive net zero pathways. She has expert standing in the natural capital community as an innovator on decision-grade data and nature tech in natural capital projects and their business models.
Hannah’s skills include establishing and maintaining strategic relationships and partnerships. She engages nationally and internationally by building and maintaining interdisciplinary knowledge exchange networks and projects, and by directly advising senior policy makers, including in the EC, UNEP, WEF, DEFRA, and The Scottish Government.
Hannah was at World Biodiversity Forum presenting a case study on the business model for restoring Scotland’s Rainforest. She was academic co-lead at The James Hutton Institute of the Trustable AI in Mapping project, funded by InnovateUK.
Hannah is co-director of a NERC funded programme focussing on Integrating Finance and Biodiversity. Her research focuses natural capital policy co-ordination between UK nations and internationally, and on how digital and data innovations in nature tech can help the natural economy sector trustably and transparently digitally measure, report and verify nature restoration, biodiversity uplift and natural carbon sequestration (dMRV). Watch this video filmed in Scotland’s Rainforest to find out more.
Hannah was Co-director of SRUC’s Thriving Natural Capital Challenge Centre until the end of 2023.
The Centre impacted policy through reports commissioned by The Scottish Government, such as Measuring Biodiversity in Scotland, co-authored by Hannah.
Hannah also created impact in society through presenting innovative topics such as vertical farming and aquaponics at Edinburgh International Science Festival, and in the natural capital sector through presenting at conferences.
Hannah was Honorary Fellow at Durham University between 2015-19, and ran a live citizen science experiment at the UK’s Centre for Life. As part of a team of researchers, Hannah brought expertise in digital information systems as research tools and participatory action research methods to the Designing for Creativity and Innovation in Informal Science Learning project. The project had impact in society through its knowledge exchange via presentations for international informal science learning practitioners at the Association of Science and Technology Centres Conference in 2016, and has impact in the academy through publications such as the Informal Learning Review, book chapters and academic journals.
From 2011 – 2015, Hannah undertook PhD research at the Institute for Informatics and Digital Innovation at Edinburgh Napier University’s School of Computing. The doctoral research studied the concepts, methodologies, and tools of The AmbITion Approach, and validated it as a framework for business transformation of the creative industries in a digital age. A new theoretical and conceptual framework called Participatory Transformation has emerged from the work. You can read and download the thesis (please reference it: Rudman, H. (2015) A framework for the transformation of the creative industries in a digital age. Ph.D., Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh.
Publications
As well as publishing research in academic journals, Hannah writes reports for Governments, and regularly chairs conference proceedings, panel sessions, and contributes case study presentations to policy innovation conferences.