Francesca Boyd

Dr Francesca Boyd’s is a mixed-method social scientist with a decade of experience in nature and wellbeing research. Her work explores how urban landscapes can be designed to foster meaningful connections between people and nature, with a particular focus on wellbeing. More recently, she has researched business owners’ action to engage with biodiversity priorities, currently working in partnership with Thousand Year Trust to understand landscape scale restoration. Her PhD at the University of Sheffield focused on tailoring opportunities for engagement with urban nature for university students’ wellbeing, with a mixed method approach it examined the public health, social prescribing and urban green infrastructure possibilities to enhance university students’ mental health. Francesca’s MSc thesis examined why people do not engage with the natural environment in the UK.

Alongside undertaking research, Francesca is interested in how research has an impact. This originates from her work across policy, research and the charitable sector. Francesca has created high-quality knowledge exchange in a range of roles including as the Knowledge Exchange Leader at the Ecosystem Knowledge Network, Behavioural Scientist at Forest Research and the Nuffield Trust’s Lord Flower’s Fellow in the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. Most recently Francesca has worked on a British Council ‘Connections Through Culture’ grants (2023/24 and 2024/25) in partnership with ATMA in Malaysia.  She spent a year as a Research and Impact Fellow at University of Exeter Business School (Cornwall) with a focus on understanding business owners motivations to engage with Net Zero and biodiversity impact.