Energy and net zero transitions depend on meaningful public engagement. How society engages with these issues is undergoing significant changes. In response, the Public Engagement Observatory of the UK Energy Research Centre has launched a new call for evidence on interesting or significant cases of public engagement with energy and climate change.
Research by 3S member Martin Mahony has helped inform a new piece of theatre, which will be staged in Birmingham and London next month. Part of the Archives Assemble! project, Missives tells the story of an earthquake crisis in 1930s Montserrat. Using verbatim archival extracts and new material by playwright Chadd Cumberbatch and A-Dziko Simba Gegele, the piece explores the complex, human and sometimes very…
3S researcher Martin Mahony has helped build the new Montserrat Volcanic Crisis Archive, which goes live this week. The Archives Assemble! project team has worked closely with the Montserrat National Trust to build a new and accessible digital archive of materials which will tell the story of the 1990s eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano and its impacts on the people of…
In exploring novel ways of accounting for diverse public engagements with energy, climate change, and net zero on an ongoing basis, the UKERC Public Engagement Observatory, based in the 3S Research Group, Our Climate Engagements: The Observatory’s new crowdsourcing capabilityis currently piloting novel crowdsourcing approaches where stakeholders and citizens are directly involved in mapping public…
The new MSc in Sustainability and Society created by the 3S Research Group in the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA will explore the social science of sustainability, helping students to develop sustainability solutions that work for society.
Professor Matthew Kearnes (University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney) will be giving our next 3S Seminar, Wednesday 18th December 2024, 13:00-14:00pm, SCI 01.38 (UEA). During the seminar, Professor Kearnes will introduce the concept of ‘critical circularity‘ of the circular economy, with reference to two overlapping studies focused on the configuration of projects of repair and…
3S researcher Martin Mahony is due to speak on 26th November 2024 at the Biannual Geneva Environmental Lectures series which brings together leading scholars from across the social sciences and humanities explore the interplay of knowledge, nature, and governance. Through his talk entitled “Science in a crisis: Networks, hierarchies and colonial continuities in responses to volcanic crises”, Martin…
Addressing climate change and realising net zero demands long-term systemic changes and the meaningful engagement of society. However, most existing approaches to public engagement focus on communicating to the public or inviting publics to engage in discrete one-off processes – such as behaviour change initiatives, attitude surveys, and deliberative processes – in specific parts of…
Nickhil Sharma, a 3S PhD Student, has recently completed some pioneering work with UK Power Networks (UKPN) where he introduced intersectionality as both a critical theory for reflection and a methodological tool. UKPN, who are responsible for elecricity networks across London, the South East, and East Anglia were encouraged to adopt the lens of intersectionality…
Moving beyond mainstream ‘residual realist’ perspectives of participation as discrete, specific and pre-given, constructivist STS scholarship sees participation, publics and public issues as co-produced through the performance of collective practices that interrelate in wider systems. Work on remaking participation in STS, and specifically within UKERC’s Public Engagement Observatory, has developed the theoretical basis for an…
Universities are increasingly being challenged to show leadership in responding to and addressing climate change. Staff, students and the wider UEA community are already attempting to address some of these challenges on their own terms. However, universities have wider untapped potential to move beyond a siloed approach to decision-making and address the many social and…
We are delighted to invite contributions to a panel on ‘mapping participation’ at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2024 in London on 27th-30th August 2024. The panel is organised by 3S members Jason Chilvers, Helen Pallett, Phedeas Stephanides and Elliot Honeybun-Arnolda. This session brings together work on mapping public participation and engagement that is emerging in geography,…
Universities are increasingly being challenged to show leadership in responding to and addressing climate change. Staff, students and the wider UEA community are already attempting to address some of these challenges on their own terms. However, universities have wider untapped potential to move beyond a siloed approach to decision-making and address the many social and…
We are delighted to invite contributions to our panel at the 2024 quadrennial joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) in Amsterdam on 16-19 July. The panel is co-convened by 3S members Jason Chilvers, Helen Pallett, Phedeas Stephanides and…
Prof Jason Chilvers (3S Chair; UKERC Co-Director and Observatory Lead) and Dr Phedeas Stephanides (Senior Researcher) have published a new briefing reporting on the findings of a collaborative experiment with partners from the Climate Citizens Project at Lancaster University, the Climate Change Committee, and Shared Future CIC on public engagement with home energy decarbonisation. This experiment in evaluating a citizens’ panel on…
How do we engage with the colonial present? This question is central to Planetary Portals Collective, and on the 8 December they will present two related bodies of recent work: the launch of the newly published book, Red Earth, by Michael Salu and a performance-reading of Diamond Power by the Collective (Michael Salu, Kathryn Yusoff,…
Teresa Guadalupe De Leon Escobedo is a PhD researcher in Human Geography at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). She is doing a short-term research visit with 3S member Martin Mahony. Her research focuses on the production of Regional Climate Scenarios for Mexico and the construction of anticipatory adaptation policies. Through interviews with climate scientists in…
The UKERC Public Engagement Observatory, based in the 3S Research Group, maps the many different ways that people are engaging with energy, climate change and net zero on an ongoing basis. In this webinar, taking place on Monday 11th September 2023, 2-3pm, the Observatory team will present the findings of a major new analysis of…
3S member Martin Mahony has contributed to an exhibition called ‘Sensing Volcanoes’ which will feature at this year’s Royal Society Summer Science Festival. The interactive exhibition brings together findings from the Curating Crises project with cutting-edge scientific research on recent volcanic eruptions to tell the story of how techniques of sensing and detecting volcanic processes…
3S researcher Elliot Honeybun-Arnolda was recently awarded a grant from the CHASE Climate Justice network to put on a series of workshops exploring how the university curriculum might be reformed in response to the multiple challenges associated with biodiversity and climate crises. Elliot is part of a team including other 3S members Noel Longhurst and…
3S researchers Nickhil Sharma, Tom Hargreaves and Helen Pallett have a new Open Access article published in the journal Buildings and Cities on ‘Social justice implications of smart urban technologies: an intersectional approach’. The article demonstrates how, despite claims that ‘smart urban technologies’ will solve multiple urban crises, narratives around ‘smart urbanism’ (SU) often end up reinforcing and deepening existing inequalities by prioritizing market interests and data monetization over the rights and interests of marginalised groups. The article calls for a comprehensive analysis of social justice concerns in SU and develops a novel intersectional approach for doing so. It uses this approach to map and analyse 70 cases of opposition, alternatives, and glitches with smart urban technologies from around the world.
Elliot Honeybun-Arnolda has successfully defended his PhD entitled “Scientising the ‘environment’: The School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, 1967-1990”. His research looks at the history of the School of Environmental Sciences (ENV) at UEA to explore how the ‘environment’ became an object of knowledge to be made known through scientific interdisciplinarity. Through four…
Dr Tom Hargreaves is involved in an exciting new research project funded by the Ofwat Innovation Fund. Led by Anglian Water, the Enabling Water Smart Communities Project is a 4-year, £5.5m project that will involve novel collaborations between water companies, housing developers, local authorities, universities and more. The aim of the project is to develop…
3S member Casper Laing Ebbensgaard joins Kathryn Yusoff, Kerry Holden, and Michael Salu on a lecture-performance moderated by Helen Pritchard on Thursday 2nd February, 5pm GMT. The lecture-performance explores how ‘diabolical architectures’ of colonial materialism hold open Africa as a continent for extraction. Based on research in the Rhodes archives, this collaborative work responds to…
The Museum of the Anthropocene is an annual pop-up exhibition created by students on Dr Martin Mahony’s 3rd year module ‘Human Geography in the Anthropocene’. Students chose a range of objects whose stories can help us make sense of the historical, political and cultural forces that have led us into the proposed new ‘age of humans’: from beef to Barbie, plastic bags to punk rock, cricket…
3S researchers have published a briefing note introducing the Public Engagement Observatory which is housed in 3S as part of the UK Energy Research Centre. It accompanied the launch of the Observatory’s new dedicated website and open access database. The Public Engagement Observatory The UKERC Public Engagement Observatory maps the many different ways that people are engaging with…
Harriet Dudley, a third year PhD researcher at the University of East Anglia reflects on her recent secondment with the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology: “I study the conditions under which policymakers will (not) use expert climate policy advice to shape policy. I recently returned from a Research Fellowship at the Parliamentary Office of…
Join us on Tuesday 5th July 2022, from 2pm to 3pm, on a webinar marking the launch of the new dedicated website and open access database of UKERC’s Public Engagement Observatory that is based in the 3S Research Group.
3S member Martin Mahony joins Professor Vinita Damodaran (University of Sussex) and Professor Simon Schaffer (University of Cambridge) on a special panel discussion on climate change and colonialism. The panel discussion is organised by the Cambridge HPS Anthropocene (Climate Histories) reading/seminar group and will take place on Thursday 26th May at 2pm BST. The hybrid…
3S member Martin Mahony has been appointed as a founding member of the Norwich Climate Commission. The Commission is an independent advisory body set up to bring actors from the public, private and third sectors together to support, guide and track the impact of ambitious climate change and sustainability actions across Norwich. It is currently…
3S member Martin Mahony is a co-investigator on a new NERC/AHRC project called ‘Curating Crises: the past as a key to improving the stewardship of hazard knowledges for the future’
3S member Martin Mahony will participate in a free online seminar organised by the Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas in the School of Culture and Society at Aarhus University on Thursday 10th February 2021 3-5PM (GMT+1).
There are 4 competition funded PhD projects advertised at UEA with researchers from the 3S group. MAPPING PARTICIPATION IN ENERGY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND NET ZERO will be supervised by Dr Helen Pallett and Professor Jason Chilvers, and is part of the UEA Science Faculty funding competition. To date, approaches to involving the public in decisions…
3S members Laurie Waller and Jason Chilvers have a new paper in Science, Technology and Human Values analysing controversy over proposals for the large-scale removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CDR), in collaboration with Tyndall Centre colleague Tim Rayner. The study combines a digital method (web-querying) with document analysis to map debates about two CDR approaches:…
3S member Casper Laing Ebbensgaard has recently published two short chapters in the book Interior Realms. The first of these chapters, entitled ‘Collective Matter, Vertical Life’, explores the home as a site of cultural production in the vertical night. Through a vignette that follows the routines of two residents in a high-rise in central, east…
3S member Martin Mahony has two new articles out on the nature and influence of global environmental assessments.
The first, co-authored with Maud Borie (KCL), Noam Obermeister and Mike Hulme (Cambridge University), compares the knowledge-making practices of the IPCC and IPBES, the global bodies responsible for assessing science around climate change and biodiversity loss respectively.
The second article, published with a number of fellow participants in a 2019 workshop at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), argues that in order to understand the effectiveness of GEAs, we need to go beyond just tracking the translation of their findings into policy.
Midnight Sun examines everyday spaces and technologies of night in the vertical city. By displaying bespoke photography, digital media, and sculptural artworks in close dialogue with research materials drawn from everyday life in the vertical city, the exhibition questions how we might reckon with the entangled hi/stories of life in the nocturnal city. The exhibition…
Dr Irene Lorenzoni (3S Research Group, UEA) 3S Seminar, 19th May 2021, 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 before the seminar). The standard advice to politicians confronting long-term challenges such as decarbonisation is to adopt commitment devices such as binding policies. Yet…
Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh (CAST & University of Bath) 3S Seminar, 21th April 2021, 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 before the seminar). In this talk, I will present recent findings from public deliberation (e.g., Climate Assembly UK) and opinion surveys to…
3S members Helen Pallett and Jason Chilvers are among the authors of a new briefing note on public engagement with algorithms in public services in the UK. This briefing note is one of the outputs of the ‘Just Public Algorithms‘ Project which was funded by the Not Equal Network+ (EPSRC). The briefing note summarises the…