A blog post by 3S PhD student Sara Skarp reflecting on her trips to several academic conferences this summer. “Climate change is a lost battle”, human ecologist Alf Hornborg said. The people in the audience at the Degrowth conference seemed shocked, but I suspect that he was echoing secret fears. Is this what we are…
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 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…
‘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…
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…
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…
3S (Science, Society and Sustainability) Research Group 