New 3S paper on ‘environmentalism after the pandemic’

3S members Elliot Honeybun-Arnolda and Tim O’Riordan have recently published a perspective piece that explores possible futures for environmentalism after the COVID-19 pandemic, in the Journal for the History of Environment and Society. The article explores the possibility of a transition to ecocentric futures in a post-pandemic world based on historical ideas of environmentalism. Environmentalism…

Practice Network Mapping: developing interdisciplinary methodologies to explore low-carbon commuting

3S Members Tom Hargreaves and Jason Chilvers have published a new working paper, with colleagues. The paper explores the challenges of attempting to ‘model’ social practices, drawing on techniques from practice network analysis to map the links between both elements and practices. In doing so, the authors explore how participants ‘mapping’ their commuting practices and…

Light violence at the threshold of acceptability

Dr Casper Ebbensgaard (3S Research Group, UEA) 3S Seminar, 18th November, 16:00-17:00 GMT on MS Teams (please email Mandy Harmer <Amanda.Hamer@uea.ac.uk> if you would like to attend, an invite will be sent the day before the seminar). In this paper, I investigate how the legal planning system in the UK encourages forms of residential high-rise development in…

#NegativeEmissions. Can Twitter publics participate in climate policy assessments?

Dr Laurie Waller (3S Research Group, UEA) 3S Seminar, 14th October, 16:00-17:00 BST on MS Teams (please email Mandy Harmer <Amanda.Hamer@uea.ac.uk> if you would like to attend, an invite will be sent the day before the seminar). The large-scale removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CDR) is a central focus of contemporary climate policy. Assessing the “real-world”…

Harriet Dudley

I am a 1+3 PhD student in the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) and in the Science, Society & Sustainability (3S) Research Group.  My research explores UK climate change governance, specifically the role of the UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC) in shaping the wider knowledge and governance landscapes in which specific…

3S Vision for a Sustainable Future

Members of 3S have put forward a vision for a sustainable future in a new collection of thought pieces published by the University of East Anglia. The short piece ’Making sustainability social’ was written by Jason Chilvers and Tom Hargreaves on behalf of 3S drawing on our key insights. ‘Visions of a Sustainable Future’ is…

Democracy in the making – 4S/EASST 2020 Conference Panel

3S Chair Jason Chilvers and Jan-Peter Voß (Berlin University of Technology) are advertising a Call for Papers for an open panel on “Democracy in the making” to be held at the 4S/EASST conference in Prague, 18-21 August 2020. They invite submissions which reconstruct how ‘the demos’ is enacted in practice and how this is supported by…

Fully-funded PhD positions in 3S

We currently have two competition-funded PhD positions available in the 3S Research Group, to start in September 2020. Both of these positions offer full funding for home and EU students and would be based in the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA, Norwich, UK. Tom Hargreaves and Gill Seyfang are the academic supervisors on the project…

3S at the Future of Utilities: Smart Energy 2019 Conference

3S’s Tom Hargreaves recently spoke at a major industry conference on the Future of Utilities: Smart Energy 2019. Across two days, the conference explored the range of ways that smarter technologies and approaches might change the UK energy system. Tom Hargreaves’ presentation focussed on the challenges householders face when engaging with smart home technologies. This drew…

James Graham

I have always had an interest in environmental issues, I’m told in fact that I used to make and put up anti-whaling posters in primary school. That interest has broadened over the years to include policy and social issues but the core has remained the same. What was probably mostly youthful exuberance has grown up,…

Phedeas Stephanides

Senior Researcher in the Norwich Business School I am an environmental social scientist conducting interdisciplinary, critically-constructive research around societal engagement with sustainability. I am especially interested in: (a) radical grassroots innovation movements, (b) socio-technical transitions in addressing sustainability challenges, and (c) the mundane and distributed engagements with the sustainability agenda in everyday life. Having recently…

Laurie Waller

Sociologist and Senior Researcher on the FAB-GGR project. My research falls between science and technology studies (STS), digital social research and participation. I joined the 3S group in July 2018 as a full-time researcher on FAB-GGR (funded by NERC), a project assessing the feasibility of large-scale greenhouse gas removal from bioenergy with carbon capture and…

Science in the trading zone: The School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia (PhD project)

The enduring significance of the sciences of environmental change, and their impact global politics, has increasingly attracted the attention of historians of science (Edwards 2010; Howe 2014). Yet the definition of ‘environmental science’ is often taken for granted. In the post-war period the idea of ‘the environment’, and of a distinctive ‘environmental science’, began to…

Energy vulnerability among social housing tenants

3S researchers Tom Hargreaves and Noel Longhurst led a research programme in this 2-year (2016-2018) UK Energy Research Centre funded research project, based in UEA’s Centre for Competition Policy, which explored Equity and Justice in Energy Markets. As a whole, the research project was multi-disciplinary, drawing together research teams from a range of disciplines including:…

Sustainable Waste Systems and Practices

The challenge of managing and reducing domestic waste is a growing sustainability problem for governments and Local Authorities. This project investigates the inter-relationships between domestic waste systems, everyday social practices, and householders’ waste reduction and recycling activities. It will make a major contribution to reconceptualising domestic waste activities and thus help to design and implement…

Elliot Honeybun-Arnolda

I am a PhD student in the Science, Society & Sustainability (3S) Research Group. I’m interested in the role environmental sciences play in the relations between science and society. My PhD seeks to uncover a history of environmental science, using The School of Environmental Sciences at UEA as a case-study. Broadly, my research interests include;…

Laurie Kerr

I  am a PhD student in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and in the Science, Society & Sustainability (3S) Research Group.  My research explores new, shared mobility innovations, which could offer low-carbon alternatives to the use and ownership of private cars.  In particular, I focus on the people adopting these new modes of…

David Litchfield

PhD student in natural hazards and disaster risk reduction. My educational and professional background has followed two main strands: one in the health and social care sector and the other in geosciences and natural hazards. After a BSc in Human Cybernetics (University of Reading 1997), I worked in social care settings before gaining an MA…

Mark Wilson

PhD student in sustainable food systems. Mark is a PhD researcher from the University of East Anglia and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The aim of his PhD is to identify and characterise innovations which can demonstrably reduce food-related greenhouse gas emissions and have the potential to be scaled up. The focus is…

Rosalind Bark

Lecturer in Ecological Economics. My research interests employ environmental economics thinking and tools often with social science methods to address sustainability concerns around water resources and ecosystem services management in times of change. 3S relevant research includes innovative collaboration with a filmmaker to explore place attachment around river spaces and participatory approaches to flood hazard…

Jason Chilvers (Chair of 3S)

Professor of Environment and Society and Chair of the 3S Research Group in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. I am a science and technology studies (STS) scholar and geographer concerned with the changing relations between science, innovation and society in contemporary democracies, particularly in environment and sustainability contexts and…

Tom Hargreaves

I am interested in the challenge of making everyday life and society more sustainable. Accordingly, my research focuses on how different types of sustainability innovation – from ‘smart’ home technologies to grassroots social innovations like community energy initiatives – operate in everyday settings and situations, and how attempts to govern everyday life impact on patterns…

Noel Longhurst

I am an economic geographer who is interested in the relationships between sustainability, energy and economy. Empirically, my research has focused on fuel poverty, energy transitions, alternative currencies, the Transition Towns movement and alternative food initiatives. My PhD research (at the University of Liverpool) was an ethnographic study of how an ‘alternative milieu’ developed around the…

Irene Lorenzoni

Senior Lecturer in the School of Environmental Sciences. As an environmental social scientist, my research focuses the relationships between individual understandings of environmental issues – specifically climate change, its causes and consequences over different timescales- and behaviours. I am interested in opportunities and barriers to engagement with climate change, representation and communication of climate data,…

Martin Mahony

Lecturer in Human Geography. My research is concerned with how societies in different times and places make sense of weather and climate, and with how atmospheric science and technology intersect with politics and power. I recently completed a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship project called ‘Imperial weather: meteorology and the making of twentieth century colonialism’, which…

Helen Pallett

  Lecturer in the Human Geography of the Environment. My research is concerned with institutionalised practices engaging citizens with environmental and science policy issues. I am currently a co-investigator on the UK Energy Research Centre funded project systemic participation and decision-making in UK energy transitions. I am also developing new projects around the concept of…

Gill Seyfang

Reader in Sustainable Consumption, and leader of 3S’s Sustainable Consumption strand. I lead a programme of research on ‘grassroots innovations’ for sustainability. I am an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist, linking sustainability policy agendas with ‘new economics’ theories and cutting-edge community-based practice. My main research interest is around grassroots innovations, which are community-led initiatives which challenge…

The lived experience of energy vulnerability among social housing tenants

3S members Tom Hargreaves and Noel Longhurst have published a new working paper based on their research into fuel poverty and emotions. The paper argues that dominant policy understandings of fuel poverty tend to overlook its lived experience, resulting in narrow, overly technical problem framings and solutions. The authors explore a range of emotional engagements with…

Remaking Participation wins EASST book award

Remaking Participation, a book edited by 3S Chair Jason Chilvers and Matthew Kearnes (UNSW, Sydney), has received the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) 2018 Amsterdamska Award. The award, in honour of science and technology studies (STS) scholar Olga Amsterdamska, is made for a “significant creative collaboration in an edited book or special issue…

3S makes a big splash at sustainable water symposium

A team of academics from the Science, Society and Sustainability (3S) Research Group at UEA made waves last week with a pioneering premiere performance of Theoretical Blind Date – the water edition. The social science-based, water-themed dating game show was a standout contribution to the ‘Water for our People and Planet’ research symposium of the…

New Energy Perspectives Podcasts

3S PhD student and researcher Elizabeth Errington has produced a brilliant new series of podcasts about energy, which will be of interest to energy researchers, policy-makers and practitioners alike. They cover a range of issues including justice, gender and behaviour change. This is was Liz has to say about the new series: “Affordable energy is…

Broadening public engagement with energy

3S researchers Jason Chilvers, Helen Pallett and Tom Hargreaves have today launched an important policy briefing calling for a new approach to public engagement with energy.   The UK Energy Research Centre briefing – entitled ‘Public engagement with energy: broadening evidence, policy and practice’ – translates findings from our Remaking Energy Participation project to policy-makers…