New PhD on the establishment of Environmental Science at the University of East Anglia   

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…

Enabling Water Smart Communities Project 

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…

Planetary Portals: Diamond Power

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 moves online

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…

An observatory for public engagement with energy and climate change

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…

A PhD student’s reflections on making the most a policy secondment

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…

Has climate change escaped colonialism? A panel discussion with V. Damodaran, M. Mahony, and S. Schaffer

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…

Mapping controversy over carbon dioxide removal (CDR): new 3S publication

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:…

New book chapters on the nocturnal city

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…

New articles on the nature and influence of global environmental assessments

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: Exhibition on night in the vertical city

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…

Public engagement with low-carbon diets

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…

Public engagement with algorithms in public services

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…

New ScienceBrief Review on the impact of advisory bodies on climate policy

3S member Harriet Dudley recently had her first lead author publication. It was a ScienceBrief review paper that reviewed the existing evidence of the impact of independent expert advisory bodies on the design and delivery of climate policy. The review paper synthesises findings from more than 20 peer−reviewed scientific articles gathered using ScienceBrief. The publication was…

3S at the regional launch of ClimateUEA

Tom Hargreaves of the 3S Research Group will be speaking at the regional launch of ClimateUEA. The event, to be held on Thursday 11th February 2021 between 5 and 6.15pm, seeks to showcase the depth and breadth of climate change research taking place across the University, to inspire new audiences and encourage collaboration across disciplines and sectors to stimulate positive climate action.

New podcast on the links between colonialism, technology and climate change

Dr Martin Mahony of the 3S Research Group is the first contributor to the Sainsbury Centre’s ‘New Perspectives’ series of podcasts, in which new light is shed upon collection items by artists, writers and researchers. In this podcast, Martin reflects on what a pair of Alaskan snow goggles can tell us about the links between colonialism, technology and climate change

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…

Norwich Good Economy Commission

Dr Noel Longhurst of 3S is playing a key role in the recently launched Norwich Good Economy Commission. This new collaboration between the UEA and Norwich City Council is a 2-year active investigation into the economy of Norwich combining multi-disciplinary approaches. The project is part innovation lab, part think-tank which aims to develop a shared definition of and routes to a ‘good’ economy in the city. As a steering group member Noel is helping the commission take forward three exciting areas of activity.

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”…

New 3S review on ‘negative emissions technologies’ and climate futures

3S members working on the FAB-GGR project have published a new article in the journal Wires Climate Change. Laurie Waller, Jason Chilvers and Irene Lorenzoni, along with colleagues from the Tyndall Centre reviewed the global literature on the feasibility of large-scale greenhouse gas removal (GGR), examining how social and political dimensions have been treated. The…

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…

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…