When Emma is out on a research assignment, the people she meets often get a faraway look when she tells them she’s a travel writer. That sounds like one of the best jobs in the world, they say. And inevitably they ask: how do you get started?

It’s different for everyone, of course, but for Emma, it was a combination of three things: wanting to do it, working at it, and kicking off with a passion for a relatively unknown continent: Africa.

As a student of anthropology, psychology and philosophy, she specialised in primatology and daydreamed about being the next Jane Goodall, living in deep in the African rainforest with chimpanzees for company.

While that plan never made it beyond the dream, Emma’s interest in Africa continued to grow and when, in 1993, she visited the continent for the first time, she felt instantly at home. From her base in the UK, she flies south on a regular basis, and she has so far travelled through 17 different countries in North, West, East and southern Africa: for research, to take pictures, or just for fun. As well as writing about Africa for Rough Guides, she contributes features and photography to numerous books, magazines and travel websites and is a long-term contributor to Travel Africa magazine, which she edited for two and a half years between 2004 and 2006.

Many, many things draw her to Africa: the diverse cultures and rich ecology, of course, but also the fact that it’s a continent poised on the brink of change. African lifestyles have already altered a great deal in the years she’s been visiting the continent.

Her most recent African trips have taken her to Zimbabwe, to look into the effects of economic decline and political disarray on the tourist industry; to northern Mozambique, to explore what’s tipped as the hottest new island hopping destination on the planet; and to Morocco and Malawi, for fantastic musical festivals.

As well as writing about Africa, Emma, who is a keen scuba diver, writes about islands and coastal regions. Research for her Directions Guide to Lanzarote and Fuerteventura took her right under the skin of Canary Island culture to check out the islands’ best volcanic galleries, art installations, wineries and windsurfing hangouts.

Her latest project for Rough Guides takes her to the other side of the globe for the new Rough Guide to East Coast Australia, out in autumn 2008. To research this book, she is making a 4000km overland journey through some of the continent’s most stunning locations, from the lush tropical rainforest and coral cays of northern Queensland, to the cosmopolitan cities of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne – with plenty of opportunities to dive the Great Barrier Reef along the way.