Beth Collier

Beth Collier (BACP Registered) is a Nature based Psychotherapist and Anthropologist who teaches natural history and woodland living skills. Her work explores relationships with people and with nature.

As a therapist Beth works exclusively in natural settings, working in allegiance with nature to explore our emotional worlds. She has theorised our relationships with nature from an applied psychotherapeutic perspective, developing Nature Allied Psychotherapy as a modality of practice for ongoing client work and is currently writing Nature Allied Psychotherapy; Exploring Relationships with our Selves, Others and Nature, to be published by Routledge in 2020.  Beth provides professional training for psychotherapists & associated professionals on the therapeutic use of nature through the Nature Therapy School.

As a naturalist and bushcraft practitioner Beth has an interest in traditional ecological knowledge and ethnopsychology. She enjoys natural navigation, tracking and basketry and has experience of wilderness living in Scotland and Sweden. Beth has a certificate in Advanced Wilderness First Aid. She has a life long passion for nature stemming from a rural upbringing.

Beth is the Founder/Director of Wild in the City, an organisation supporting the well-being of urban residents offering experiences in bushcraft, natural history and ecotherapy; using the skills of our ancestors to nurture a deeper connection with the natural world and a sense of belonging to communities past and present.

Beth has a particular interest in supporting people of colour in finding their place in UK natural settings and creates opportunities for the representation of black leadership in nature.  Her work has produced ethnographies of our intimate, emotional relationships with nature. This includes ethnography of disconnection and it’s impact on the development of cultural attitudes which shun nature; experiences of people of colour in nature in UK settings and white attitudes to black presence in nature.

Beth regularly speaks at conferences and seminars on nature and well-being, from psychotherapeutic & anthropological perspectives including recent presentations at the Smithsonian, Tate Modern, Association of Social Anthropologists and Friends of the Earth.

In 2019 her practice and research was featured in BBC’s Cities: Nature’s New Wild.  She is a Trustee of the National Park City Foundation – a role in which she leads work on nature, health and cities, a Fellow of the London Environmental Educators Forum and a member of the teaching team at the Wellbeing Faculty of the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education.

Beth previously worked in the human rights field for 15 years, she was commissioned by UNHCR as an international expert on gender based persecution and ran a research consultancy documenting conditions in refugee producing countries.