3S contributes to Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Studies

3S members have contributed to the recently-released Elgar Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Studies. Edited by Ulrike Felt and Alan Irwin, the volume offers a comprehensive overview of the field of STS through short, accessible chapters on the field’s key frameworks, themes, and topics. It is intended to act as a guide to STS for newcomers and students, as well as to help more senior researchers keep apace with this rapidly expanding and impactful field of research.

New briefing mapping public engagement with energy, climate change and net zero

3S researchers Jason Chilvers, Phedeas Stephanides, Helen Pallett, and Tom Hargreaves have just published a new UKERC Public Engagement Observatory briefing note presenting the findings of a major new analysis of public engagement with energy, climate change, and net zero occurring in the UK between 2015-2022. The study used the comparative case analysis method developed by the…

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.

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…

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…

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…

3S Working Paper 2017-30: Theoretical Theatre: harnessing comedy to teach social science

Role playing is increasingly used in European Studies and political science more generally to foster students understanding of social science theories. Yet in most cases, role playing is only done by students. Not so in Theoretical Theatre, a teaching innovation which puts the onus on teachers to act. In our performances, teachers embody competing theories…

3S Working Paper 2016-29 Seyfang & Gilbert-Squires – Sustainable Banking Transitions

This paper presents and tests a new conceptual framework for understanding sustainable transitions in sociotechnical systems. We apply this in the first ever study of sustainable transitions in the UK retail banking system which has suffered recently from banking crises, and links to environmentally-sensitive industries such as fossil fuels. Sustainability-focused values-based banks are a potential…

3S Working Paper 2016-28 Longhurst & Chilvers – Mapping Diverse Visions of UK Energy Transitions

The need to rapidly decarbonise the energy systems which underpin modern societies is widely accepted, yet there is also growing criticism of ‘top down’, technocentric transition visions. Transitions are, such critics claim, unpredictable, contested, and comprise of multiple and competing perspectives. This paper opens up to diverse visions of UK energy transitions by studying a…

3S Working Paper 2015-27 Chilvers & Longhurst – A Relational Co-productionist Approach to Sociotechnical Transitions

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…

New research briefing on Unleashing Grassroots Innovations

A newly-published research briefing discusses how we can unleash the transformative power of grassroots innovations, looking in particular at community currencies. Unleashing Grassroots Innovations: A Quest For Community Currency Growth How can grassroots innovations grow, achieve their potential, and increase their influence? Gill Seyfang presents findings of a 3-year quest to learn about diffusing community currencies.…

Scoping note: Rethinking energy participation as relational and systemic

On July 14th 2015 Jason Chilvers, Helen Pallett and Tom Hargreaves published a scoping note entitled ‘Rethinking energy participation as relational and systemic’. As part of a the Systemic participation and decision-making in UK energy transitions UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) project the note develops new perspectives on energy participation and societal engagement with energy systems. It creates…

What’s the meaning of smart? Sociotechnical report

‘What’s the meaning of smart? A study of smart grids’ is  a report from a multidisciplinary study conducted by Nigel Hargreaves, Jason Chilvers and Tom Hargreaves. The report contends that to be smart, electricity grids have to not only be consistent with current infrastructures and other technologies in a technical sense, but also encourage engagement and adoption by end-users. A…

3S WP 2014-26 Chilvers and Longhurst – Co-production and emergence of diverse public engagements in energy transitions

The field of sustainability transitions research has a strong theoretical emphasis on the sites and modes of intervention in socio‐technical systems, with the intention of informing the purposive ‘steering’ of the system. For critics, questions of power and politics are often obscured in what, it is argued, are optimistic and technocratic transition mechanisms. In addition,…

3S WP 2014-24 Rozema – Inference in social science research

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…

3S WP 2013-23 Wilson et al – Using Smart Homes

Published research on smart homes and their users is growing exponentially, yet a clear understanding of who these users are and how they might use smart home technologies is missing from a field being overwhelmingly pushed by technology developers. Drawing on a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed literature on smart homes and their users, this…

3S WP 2013-22 Jensen – Social practices in energy-related transitions?

Reducing energy consumption from lighting is, in policy making, largely treated as a matter ofoptimizing the individual lighting product. However, this paper argues that since lighting is a highly cultural, historical and socio-material phenomenon, energy efficient (or intensive) lighting patterns evolve from something more and something else than what the individual lighting product provides. This is an…

3S WP 2013-21 Seyfang et al – A Grassroots Sustainable Energy Niche? Reflections on community energy case studies

System-changing innovations for sustainability transitions are proposed to emerge in radical innovative niches. ‘Strategic Niche Management’ theory predicts that niche-level actors and networks will aggregate learning from local projects, distilling and disseminating best practice. This should lower the bar for new projects to form and establish, thereby encouraging the innovation to diffuse through replication. Within…

3S WP 2013-20 Foulds et al – Investigating the performance of everyday domestic practices using building monitoring

Building monitoring can enhance our understanding of everyday life, yet has sparsely been used in social practices research. Monitoring usually provides context (e.g. differences in performing practices) for more prominent qualitative inquiry, and is rarely centrally integrated methodologically. This paper aims to investigate the potential usefulness of utilising, and integrating more centrally, building monitoring to…

3S WP 2013-19 Hauxwell-Baldwin – The Politics and Practice of ‘Community’ in UK Government Funded Climate Change Initiatives

Academics and policy-makers have claimed that community has a potentially useful role to play in encouraging pro-environmental behaviour change. Yet despite a growing literature on the role of community in doing so, a critical examination of the policy context in which it is being employed towards that goal is currently lacking. This paper addresses that…

3S WP 2013-18 Borie Hulme – The authority of expertise in Global Environmental Assessments

Fifty years ago, Michael Polanyi wrote his classic essay in defence of the autonomy of scientific enquiry: The Republic of Science: its political and economic theory. Contrasting with this vision, the past 30 years have seen the proliferation of Global Environmental Assessments (GEAs) which are explicitly associated with societal goals. The most recent example is…

3S WP 2012-17 Chilvers – Expertise, Technologies and Ecologies of Participation

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…

3S WP 2012-16 Macrorie – The dynamics and governance of thermal comfort practices in low carbon housing

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…

3S WP 2012-15 Hulme – What sorts of knowledge for what sort of politics? Science climate change and the challenges of democracy

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…

3S WP 2012-14 Hargreaves – Opening the black box of the household: Understanding how householders interact with feedback from smart energy monitors

Current models of the role of energy feedback in helping to reduce energy use, assume it fills an information deficit in individual energy consumers’ knowledge and thus encourages them, rationally, to reduce their consumption levels either to save money or the environment. Based on 15 semi? structured interviews with participants trialling a range of smart…

3S WP 2012-13 Sharp et al – Governance of Resource Efficiency: Insights from Cultural Theory

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…

3S WP 2012-12 Hargreaves et al Exploring the role of intermediaries in UK community energy: grassroots innovations and niche development

Multiple sustainability challenges are increasingly seen as demanding a fundamental transition in the energy system. In this context, community energy projects attract interest as sources for radical innovations. Studies of such bottom-up, civil society-led ‘grassroots innovations’, however, frequently highlight the profound challenges they face in growing, diffusing or even simply surviving. Strategic niche management SNM)…

3S WP 2012-11 Seyfang et al – Community energy in the UK

Community energy has been proposed as a new policy tool to help achieve the transition to a low- carbon energy system, but the evidence base for this strategy is partial and fragmented. We therefore present new empirical evidence from the first independent UK-wide survey of community energy projects. Our survey investigates the objectives, origins and…

3S WP 2012-10 Seyfang Longhurst – Grassroots innovation for sustainability: A niche analysis of community currencies

Over the last decade, the nascent field of Sustainability Transitions has sought to explain the conditions under which technological innovations can diffuse and disrupt existing socio-technical systems through the successful scaling up of experimental ‘niches’. Building on this pioneering work, recent research on ‘grassroots innovations’ argues that civil society is a promising but under- researched…

3S WP 2012-09 Foulds et al – A domestic practices perspective on Passivhaus living

This paper uses social practice theory to explore the implications of new low carbon dwellings upon energy consuming practices. The handover period for a small to medium sized UK Passivhaus development was investigated, predominantly using interviews as well as informal observation and participation at key events (e.g. move-in day technology tours, information sessions, post-move-in landlord…

3S WP 2012-08 Bucio et al – Energy densities: why do they matter for sustainability?

Immoderate institutional focus on CO2 emissions tends to obscure the energy-density challenge implied by the low-carbon economy transition. Such an attention deficit is often apparent in the sustainability transitions literature in general and in the multi-level perspective (MLP) in particular. The latter characterises the comparatively “benign” conditions of industrial societies which, riding the upside of…

3S WP 2012-07 North Longhurst – Beyond the rural idyll: political strategies of urban ‘Transition’ initiatives

This paper engages with the progressive politics of climate change and resource constraint developed in the UK and elsewhere by the Transition initiatives ‘movement’ which looks to develop a positive local politics of the transition to a low carbon economy and society. The paper argues firstly that Transitions strengths are in raising issues and developing…

3S WP 2012-05 Groomes and Seyfang – Secondhand Spaces and Sustainable Consumption: Examining Freecycle’s Environmental Impacts and User Motivations

Sustainable consumption demands that greater attention is paid to the causes and consequences of a materialistic consumer society, in particular the issue of ever-increasing post-consumer waste. Current research suggests that secondhand disposition and acquisition are motivated by generosity, economic necessity and personal fulfilment. Despite the recent growth of online secondhand spaces, including Freecycle (an online…