Ellie Fox

Ellie researches threats to glaciers and inequality in water access, with a focus on the Andes. She's interested in how mining extractivism and climate change affect glaciers, and how this influences water access for local communities. Specifically, her PhD focuses on how glacier protection and fair water governance are influenced by scientific data, methods, and knowledge. The research sits at the intersection of science and technology studies, critical physical geography, and glaciology. She specialises in interdisciplinary methods, across the social and physical sciences, and participatory research.

Her PhD (2022-2025) is titled: 'How glacier retreat and mining expansion affect water availability, access and use for communities in the Semi-Arid Chilean Andes’. This project is funded by the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Environmental Intelligence (EICDT), and supervised by the interdisciplinary team of Dr Steven Palmer, Dr Ernesto Schwartz-Marin, Dr Sally Rangecroft, and Professor Stephan Harrison.

Before her PhD, she completed a training year as part of the EICDT, where she studied critical social science approaches to the use of big data and machine learning for addressing environmental challenges. She also trained in remote sensing and machine learning. In 2021, she graduated from the University of Cambridge with First Class Honours with Distinction in BA Geography.