The Channel 4 documentary ‘Dirty Business’ left me feeling incredibly angry and depressed about the state of the waters in the UK. The research of Safia Bailey (featured recently) and Nikki Paterson offers a source of optimism that the environment has not been forgotten. I spoke to Nikki in early 2026 about her research and about outdoor swimming sites in our shared local area of Yorkshire. The chat can be found on the ‘Chat, Stories and Memories’ page. Nikki is a doctoral researcher at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity at the University of York. Further information about Nikki’s work can be found at: https://www.york.ac.uk/anthropocene-biodiversity/people/nikki-paterson/

Her research page describes her work as follows:

“I’m in the final year of my PhD. My research draws on more-than-human and ecofeminist theory to take a critical look at the idea of ‘nature connection’. I’m thinking about porosity and interdependency between humans and ‘nature’, and about where the boundaries of the human might be. I’m interested in how experiences of the living world affect human wellbeing, and in mutualistic conceptions of wellbeing.

My ethnographic fieldwork explores the experiences of outdoor swimmers in freshwater bodies – rivers, lakes and reservoirs – across Yorkshire. I’m interested in the experience of being embodied in this context, and in how encounters with cold water, nonhumans, and pollution affect swimmers.”