Martin Mahony

British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and 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. My current fellowship project is called ‘Imperial weather: meteorology and the making of twentieth century colonialism’, and…

Imperial Weather: Meteorology and the Making of Twentieth Century Colonialism

In this British Academy-funded project 3S lecturer Martin Mahony is investigating the intersections of science, empire and climate in order to understand how practices of predicting and observing the weather were shaped by the context of British colonialism. Relationships between science and empire have been well documented in a burgeoning field concerned with the histories and…

Crisis as Opportunity? An ethnographic case-study of the post-capitalist possibilities of Crisis Community Currency Movements

A growing body of scholarship suggests that capitalism is not inevitable and that moments of crisis provide an opportunity for critique and social transformation towards sustainability. Yet literature on social movements employing direct-action tactics to unmake capitalism and challenge austerity in the wake of the ongoing economic crisis is still lacking. It has neither adequately…

‘Opening up’ geoengineering appraisal: Deliberative Mapping of options for tackling climate change (PhD Project)

Deliberate large-scale interventions in the Earth’s climate system known as ‘geoengineering’ have been proposed in order to moderate anthropogenic climate change. This PhD research critically reviewed existing appraisals of geoengineering before developing and executing its own appraisal method in response to their limitations. The research developed an innovative multicriteria method called deliberative mapping to ‘open…

Citizen Science for Disaster Risk Reduction

‘Citizen science’ can place citizens at the centre of a process that generates new knowledge for disaster risk reduction. This project, funded under the Research Councils UK Global Challenges Research Fund, aims to understand how citizen science is currently applied to disaster risk reduction (DRR) objectives in the face of natural hazards, and how it might be more…

Jellyfish Bloom Risk and Management Implications in Northern Europe (PhD Project)

Large concentrations of jellyfish are increasingly being recorded worldwide. The main drivers of this are hypothesised to be as a result of increasing ocean temperatures and increases in prey availability. These factors are often influenced by anthropogenic activities that alter the characteristics of the oceans in favour of gelatinous zooplankton. The impacts of a bloomed…

Coastal change in Norfolk: The contribution of visualizations to decision making (PhD Project)

Many communities along the Norfolk coast have historically, and more recently, seen changes to their landscapes. Significant changes are likely in the future, especially in areas where coastal erosion is evident. The way these changes are communicated and the level of community engagement in the decision making process on how to deal with current and…