Humanity space
Our People
Meet the People Behind the Vision
At the Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space, our work is driven by a diverse and interdisciplinary team of researchers and collaborators. United by a shared commitment to exploring humanity and space, our strand leads and representatives bring expertise from across the humanities, sciences, and beyond. Together, they shape the Centre’s research agenda, foster innovative dialogue, and ensure our work remains grounded, inclusive, and forward-thinking.
Dr Eleanor Armstrong, Early Career Representative
Dr Eleanor S Armstrong (she/her) is a researcher in the social studies of outer space with an emphasis on queer feminist approaches to representation, geographies, and colonialities of the cosmos. Dr Armstrong is a Space Research Fellowship at the University of Leicester, UK through their Institute of Space Research, where she leads the research group Constellations Lab: Outer Space & Feminism. Her first book, Exhibiting Outer Space is under contract with Routledge’s Museums in Focus Series. She has been a visiting fellow at, amongst others, the University of Cambridge, Ingenium Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation, New York University, Stellenbosch University and University of Vienna; and has held national research grants in the UK, US and Sweden.
Dr Fay Baldry, EDI Representative
Dr Fay Baldry is an Associate Professor of Education at the School of Education and she sits on the EDI subcommittee for the Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers. Equality, diversity and inclusion underpin all her work in the field of education, from being an integral part of developing student-teachers through to research focussing on how pupils experience classrooms. She will focus how different voices are heard within the interdisciplinary spaces, ensuring EDI is an integral part of all aspects of the who, what and how of LCHS research.
Professor Ana Cristina Costa, Living and Working in Space Strand Lead
Professor Ana Cristina Costa is Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Director of Research at the School of Management, College of Business. Her work focuses on understanding why team-based collaborations succeed (or fail) in different contexts, and how these are impacted by employment practices, leadership, control, trust, and other factors. Her research often combines quantitative individual and team data level data with longitudinal panel data. She is particularly interested in the unique intersection of organizational behaviour, industrial psychology, human performance and space exploration. Previously she has obtained funding from the NASA-Johnson Space Centre in the USA to study team trust in the specific context of extreme conditions endured by NASA astronauts on long duration space missions, and from the Leverhulme Trust Foundation in the UK collaborating with European partners from the University of Valencia (Spain) and University of Maastricht (The Netherlands) to investigate the dark-side of innovation and its impact on employee performance and wellbeing. Professor Costa is member of several editorial boards and currently serves as Associate Editor of the ABS four-star British Journal of Management.
Dr Scott Davidson, Development, Sustainability and Fairness Strand Lead
Dr Scott Davidson is a specialist in strategic communication and the current LCHS Development, Sustainability and Fairness strand leader. His previous research has focused on themes around communication, influence and civic empowerment. Including problems with consensus-oriented communication, connecting empowerment to corporate social responsibility and predicting the main argumentation strategies deployed in lobbying. He is interested in exploring how Earth-Space Sustainability is understood – and contested – and how the societal and environmental implications of space activity are framed, contested, and legitimised across public, corporate, and political discourses. He is the director of EUPRERA Network on Public Affairs and Lobbying in Europe and a member of the UKspace Government Relations Committee.
Dr Raúl González Muñoz, Peace, Security and Governance Strand Lead
Dr Raúl González Muñoz is a lecturer in Space Policy and Economy at the University of Leicester (UK), Research Lead for the Institute for Space in Space Park Leicester and an Associate Fellow on the Geopolitics of Outer Space at the Academy of International Affairs NRW (Germany). He is also a Board Member of the Spanish Association for Aeronautical and Space Law AEDAE (Spain). Prior to his current positions he was a Scientific Project Lead in Capgemini Engineering and a member of the Space Task Force at the European External Action Service (EEAS) in the European Commission. He holds a PhD in Aerospace Manufacturing from Cranfield University (UK), developed in close collaboration with Airbus, and has conducted studies in Sciences Po University (France) and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain). His research focuses on space policy and economy, space security and defence and European strategic autonomy.
Professor Suzie Imber, Scientist in Residence
Professor Suzie Imber is a Professor of Space Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy. She uses a combination of space- and ground-based data sets to study space weather and magnetospheric dynamics at the Earth and the planet Mercury, and she is a Co-Investigator on the Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer on board the BepiColombo mission, which will arrive at Mercury in 2026. She received the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for contributions to planetary science and her work widening access to Higher Education in the UK. She is particularly interested in applying existing techniques to new areas of research, for example using her programming skills alongside digital elevation models provided by satellites, to produce the first complete list of mountains in the Andes, and then going to climb many of the unclimbed, high altitude peaks that she had discovered! She is co-lead of the Space Environment strand of the Institute for Space, has a strong interest in human spaceflight, and is keen to collaborate across discipline boundaries as part of the LCHS. She will be the ’Scientist in Residence’ for the Centre - happy to answer science questions about the space environment, and provide links to the space industry and academia.
Dr Ben Parsons, Communication, Representation and Experience Strand Lead
Dr Ben Parsons is a teacher and researcher based in the School of Arts, Media and Communication. He has particular interest in the early history of science fiction, especially neglected traditions and figures, and he leads undergraduate and postgraduate modules on literary and cinematic engagements with space as a source of both wonder and worry. He has published widely on various aspects of medieval and early modern culture, including crime, adolescence, popular religion, satire, and mental illness, and his books include Punishment and Medieval Education (2018), Two Middle English Prayer Cycles (2023) and Introducing Medieval Animal Names (2025). He will lead the Centre's work on cultural depictions of space, and the ways in which they shape and have shaped our understanding of its challenges and potentialities.