The 3rd seminar in the ‘Nuclear futures: re-making sociotechnical research agendas’ interdisciplinary seminar series will be held at UEA on 9th-10th January 2017. Its title is ‘Publics and participation in radioactive waste management’.
This 3S-led module is a second-year undergraduate option on our BA/BSc Geography degrees, and our Environmental Sciences degrees. The most significant obstacles to problem solving are often political, not scientific or technological. This module examines the theoretical and empirical development of contemporary environmental politics. It is structured to analyse these issues from different theoretical perspectives, particularly theories of power…
This 3S-led module is a third-year undergraduate option on our BA/BSc Geography degrees, and our Environmental Sciences degrees. It will introduce students to a range of social science perspectives on the inter-relationships between energy and people. The module begins by tracing the history and development of energy intensive societies and everyday lives as a means…
ENV Social Science Seminar Solidarity Economies: Geographies of social, solidarity and antagonistic economies – Peter North Wednesday 7th December 2016 TPSC 2.03 4.00 – 5.30pm This seminar addresses grassroots attempts to build socially inclusive and sustainable economies through what are variously called diverse or community economies. It distinguishes between social entrepreneurship, using business skills to…
Funding is now available for full or part-time +3 (PhD) or 1+3 (Masters and PhD) PhD studentships in the 3S research group as part of the South-East Network for Social Sciences (SeNSS) Doctoral Training Partnership. If you’re interested in applying for a PhD (whether +3 or 1+3) please contact either Dr Tom Hargreaves (tom.hargreaves@uea.ac.uk) or…
Exciting PhD Opportunity in 3S
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 members Gill Seyfang and Helen Pallett took to the stage recently for UEA’s annual Learning and Teaching Day (5th May 2016), to demonstrate Comedy in the Classroom, an exciting new teaching method which is growing and catching on across UEA and further afield. In an interdisciplinary School of Environmental Sciences, students who are more…
Members of the 3S group have organised panel sessions at three different European conferences over the summer of 2016 on the topic of relational and systemic approaches to public participation in science, innovation and sustainability transitions. These panels all draw on conceptual, methodological and empirical innovations in the 3S group from the recent Remaking Participation book and…
In a new 3S working paper Noel Longhurst and Jason Chilvers undertake a comparative analysis of twelve diverse visions of UK energy transitions. The paper draws on research undertaken as part of the EPSRC-funded Realising Transition Pathways (RTP) project. Within this project the role of the 3S team has been to develop further insights into…
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…
Comedy in the classroom – our award-winning innovative teaching in 3S – is leading the way at UEA right now. We made the front page of UEA’s quarterly Learning Highlights newsletter, which showcases exciting new developments and shares best practice. You can read more about it here, as Gill Seyfang’s feature explains the whys and wherefores…
See the call for papers below for a session at the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers’ Annual Conference in August 2016, organised by 3S members Jason Chilvers and Helen Pallett. Relational geographies of participation Organised by Jason Chilvers and Helen Pallett (3S Research Group, University of East Anglia, UK) For geographers…
See the call for papers below for a closed session proposed by 3S members Jason Chilvers and Helen Pallett for the forthcoming 4S/EASST conference in Barcelona. 4S/EASST Conference Session, Barcelona, August 31 – September 3, 2016 Ecologies of participation: Thinking systemically about science and technology by other means Organised by Jason Chilvers and Helen Pallett…
In a new open access paper in the Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning Jason Chilvers and Noel Longhurst set out a new framework that reconceives public and civil society engagement in energy transitions as co-produced, relational and emergent. The paper speaks to the urgent challenge of transitioning to sustainable low carbon energy systems and debates…
A new 3S Working Paper by Jason Chilvers and Noel Longhurst develops a novel approach to understanding and intervening in sociotechnical system transitions, in domains such as energy and sustainability. The approach builds a relational and co-productionist understanding of system change – grounded theories from science and technology studies (STS) and wider social theory –…
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…
Award-winning teaching led by 3S members in ENV is the centrepiece of a new website ComedyInTheClassroom.org which raises UEA’s profile as an exemplar of creative and innovative teaching. Dr Gill Seyfang created the website to showcase an exciting new teaching method which has the potential to transform teaching in higher education. Comedy in the Classroom…
As part of the launch activities for their new Remaking Participation book Jason Chilvers of 3S and Matthew Kearnes are hosting two panel discussion sessions at the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Annual Meeting in Denver on Saturday 14th November. The sessions will feature presentations from authors who have written chapters for the…
3S Chair Jason Chilvers’ new book Remaking Participation: Science, Environment and Emergent Publics is published this week by Routledge. The volume, co-edited with Dr Matthew Kearnes (School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales, Australia), develops ambitious new theoretical perspectives on public participation with science, technology and the environment and offers important practical…
We are recruiting for a lecturer to join the 3S research group and contribute to our growing and vibrant research and teaching. The University of East Anglia invites applications for a Lectureship in the Human Geography of the Environment in the School of Environmental Sciences. The successful candidate will have a developing international research record in…
ESRC (2014) Identifies the degree to which the Regional Flood and Coastal Committees (RFCCs) provide a collaborative approach to flood and coastal management at local level through the involvement of local actors.
The UK Government’s public dialogue body Sciencewise was the subject of 3S member Helen Pallett‘s PhD research into organisational learning from and about public participation. Helen’s PhD thesis is open access and available to download here, and she has also produced a short report on her findings and recommendations which is now available on the…
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.…
UEA is now accepting applications for its new BA Geography degree based in the School of Environmental Sciences, which is being led by 3S faculty members. The degree complements our existing BSc Geography, and this new BA offers a broader range of human geography training, drawing on the world-leading expertise of 3S members. Dr Gill…
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…
One of our 3S members, Tina Blaber-Wegg, has been working across the schools of Environmental Sciences and International Development at the UEA on a free online course on Environmental Justice. This has certainly proved popular! The course, available on the Future Learn platform (www.futurelearn.com) has in excess of 5,000 registered students and is in week…
The quest for sustainability’s holy grail will be the subject of a keynote presentation by Gill Seyfang (3S, UEA) at the European Society for Ecological Economics 2015 conference. Her challenge is to find the key to unleashing the transformative potential of grassroots innovations, such as sustainable money, food, energy, housing, transport and food systems, whose…
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…
3S is delighted to welcome Freja Friis as a visiting PhD research scholar from March to May 2015. Freja is completing her PhD at the Danish Building Research Institute, a part of Aalborg University in Copenhagen, with Kirsten Gram-Hanssen as her supervisor. Freja’s PhD is a sociological study about how to integrate smart grid technologies…
‘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…
UKERC (2014-19) Seeks to develop an understanding of diverse forms of participation around the UK energy system
The final report from the ‘Making Energy Publics’ workshop hosted by the 3S group last year is released today. The workshop brought together leading voices from Science and Technology Studies, Human Geography and Sociology to discuss the future of academic research into and engagement with the making of energy publics. The central argument of the…
EPSRC (2012-16) Developing, appraising and realising pathways towards a UK low carbon electricity system by 2050.
EC (2014-17) Develops a theory of transformative social innovation which is about empowerment and change in society.
EU FP7 (2010-11) How members of the public understand and engage with climate change impacts on marine environments, ranging from ocean acidification and species distribution change to sea-level rise and costal erosion.
EPSRC (2014-15) How stakeholder perspectives compare and contrast around the meaning of smart with particular attention paid to the emerging opportunities for energy end users and producers.
This project looks at the recovery process and adaptation strategies of local communities affected by a volcanic eruption. Noting a large gap in the understanding of post-disaster period, I aim to understand the different stages and strategies which lead the recovery process and the adaptation choices, especially in terms of sustainable development and reduction of…
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,…
Seyfang, Gill, and Noel Longhurst. Understanding the diffusion of grassroots innovations for sustainability: An international study of community currency niches. Norwich, UK: Science, Society and Sustainability Research Group, 2014-25