The natural environment has always fascinated Joshua, particularly the oceans, which has led to him studying physical geography in 2011. In his studies, he has focused on coastal and marine ecosystems and their response to sea level rise and anthropogenic impacts. From the beginning, he has had a keen interest in fieldwork to study the marine environment. This field experience has comprised of airborne- and ground-based seagrass monitoring campaigns, but also dune and saltmarsh associated vegetation surveys in the German Wadden Sea. He has also taken part in a research expedition with the German research icebreaker RV Polarstern to the central Arctic Ocean and the North Pole, where he deployed benthic sampling equipment and conducted on-board experiments to assess sedimentary oxygen uptake rates and environmental drivers in shelf and deep-sea sediments.
In October 2016, he began a PhD at the Coastal Risks and Sea Level Rise research group at the Geography Department of Kiel University. His research focusses on the potential of coastal restoration and nature-based adaptation to mitigate coastal flooding.
Since November 2020, Joshua works in the joint research project ECAS-Baltic (Ecosystem-supporting Coastal Adaptation Strategies for the German Baltic Sea Coast). His work involves the co-development of nature-based coastal adaptation strategies and the assessment of flood risk under their implementation on regional and local scale.
Joshua's teaching experience involves introductory courses, excursions and fieldwork trainings in the subject of physical geography, including lessons on geomorphology, climatology, coastal and marine processes, soil sciences and landscape ecology. He is also supervising Bachelor´s theses on the above topics.
