New funding announced today will see our 3S Research Group become a core part of the new five-year phase of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). As part of this significant investment 3S will establish and house the first ever national observatory for societal engagement with energy and net zero transitions, which is a new core…
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 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…
‘Just Public Algorithms’ is a project funded by Not Equal EPSRC Network+: Social Justice through the Digital Economy. It ran September 2019 – April 2020. The project was led by Helen Pallett, supported by Jason Chilvers and Catherine Price in 3S, and Simon Burall at Involve. The main aim of the ‘Just public algorithms’ project…
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:…
FAB-GGR is an interdisciplinary project that aims to better understand the real-world feasibility and consequences of large-scale afforestation and biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) approaches to greenhouse gas removal (GGR). As part of FAB-GGR, 3S researchers – Jason Chilvers, Laurie Waller, Irene Lorenzoni – are studying the social and political feasibility of developing afforestation and…
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, 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…
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…
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…
Social practice theory is a relatively young field of scholarship in social science and has a lot to offer in terms of describing the actions of individuals and communities – particularly with regards to mundane situations or everyday live. To date there has not been a lot of work done on the governance of practices…
In this paper we develop an approach to sociotechnical change that is grounded in relational and co-productionist theories from science and technology studies (STS) and wider social theory. This is a constructive project to further develop and advance understandings and explanations of actor dynamics and sociotechnical change. In doing so we propose a new relational…
News about our exciting and innovative teaching methods in 3S is spreading far and wide! A new blogpost by Viviane Gravey, a PhD student in the School of Environmental Sciences here at UEA, discusses how Theoretical Theatre methods have been applied to teaching theories of power in relation to Environmental politics, and European Union studies in…
Abduction is a very promising mode of inference, particularly when researchers aim to simultaneously build and test theoretical propositions. Yet the application of abduction in social science research is marginal in comparison with induction and deduction. It is likely that this is due so to limited understanding of what abduction does and how it works…
In the turn to a more critical and reflexive mode of research on public participation with science- related issues limited attention has been given to ‘public participation expertise’, the rise of mediators as a new category of expert, and the ‘technologies of participation’ that they assemble. Drawing on an in-depth study involving mediators of public…
Ambitious government targets set an agenda to reduce domestic energy demand, however the leverage of policies in this domain is poorly understood. Considering a social housing development recently constructed in the east of England, designed to be operationally carbon neutral, this research focuses upon the role of low-carbon technologies in delivering a reduction in residential…
There are two propositions about knowledge society and policy-making which – if true – are troubling in the context of climate change. First policy-making seems ever more reliant on knowledge and yet science seems to deliver knowledge (at least in this context) with ever less certainty or authority. And second and here I quote Dan…
Resource demand management initiatives are designed based upon implicit understandings of power and knowledge distribution between formal institutions and resource users. Employing an interpretive account of cultural theory, resource governance modes are developed in order to explore the differing assumptions held by, and means of action employed by, a set of three consecutive domestic resource…
This paper contributes to a more reflexive mode of research on public engagement with science- related issues through studying actors that mediate science-society interactions, their roles and relationships, and the nature and extent of learning and reflexivity, in participatory governance networks. A mapping framework is developed to describe the roles and relations of actors mediating…
This paper seeks to demonstrate the utility of using two different approaches to sustainability system innovation in parallel, arguing that doing so provides valuable insights that would be lost if only one theoretical lens is used. The Multi-Level Perspective and Social Practice Theory have emerged as competing approaches for understanding the complexity of socio-technical change.…
This paper examines attempts to reduce household energy consumption through the introduction of real time display monitors (RTDs) that enable householders to ‘see’ their energy use (and its associated carbon emissions) and thus take steps to reduce it. Drawing on repeat semi-structured interviews, conducted 12-months apart, with 10 householders participating in a ‘Visible Energy Trial’…
NERC (2014-15) Aims to determine the environmental impacts of the December 2013 North Norfolk storm surge event and understand the social responses.
EU FP7 (2010-13) Develops new global low emissions scenarios, placing EU efforts in a global context; builds an approach for assessing EU policies against mitigation and adaptation objectives and for developing alternative policy options.
EU FP7 (2008-11) CONSENSUS (Confronting Social and Environmental Sustainability with Economic Pressure: Balancing Trade-offs by Policy Dismantling?) explores historical patterns of deregulation to investigate conflicts between these objectives are addressed in processes of policy dismantling.
EU FP7 (2009-14) Linking Impact Assessment Instruments to Sustainability Expertise: aims to provide a focus for international research on the use of evidence, science and assessment tools in policy-making.
Leverhulme Trust (2010-13) At a time when natural scientists are anxiously debating the importance of critical ‘tipping points’ in natural systems, this project will in effect explore the scope for ‘tipping’ the multi-level governance systems in large, polluting states to enable significant and enduring policy innovation for climate change governance.
London, Thursday 17 February 2011 This final workshop of the two-year ESRC Seminar Series ‘Critical perspectives on public engagement in science and environmental risk’ drew together insights and themes from across the seminars, which sought to consolidate a new field of critical public engagement research and practice in the context of anticipatory governance of emerging technologies…
Thursday 26 October 2010, SPRU, University of Sussex The fourth workshop in the ESRC seminar series Critical Perspectives on Public Engagement in Science and Environmental Risk explored both formal and informal forms of public engagement and participation in the context of energy systems and transitions to sustainability. The energy system and the need to build more…
Institute of Hazard and Risk Research, Durham University Tuesday 15 December 2009 The second workshop of the ESRC seminar series Critical Perspectives on Public Engagement in Science and Environmental Risk explored the incipient institutionalisation of public engagement and deliberation. Contemporary science policy has taken a distinct ‘deliberative turn’. Across a range of domains – biotechnology,…
3S (Science, Society and Sustainability) Research Group 