My research is focused on different forms of public engagement and public participation employed in the decision-making, planning and operation of energy projects. Different ownership models including, commercial, cooperative and community benefit societies are considered and localised impacts examined.
pathway: Sustainable Futures Alumni
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Dr Ed Atkins
My work has found itself focusing on the competing perceptions of the environment and, in particular, water and how such understandings interact and compete within discourse. Utilising the case study of dam construction in contemporary Brazil, this is with a particular focus on the discourses used to deflect opposition to important schemes of reform and infrastructure construction. My wider research interests include the narratives of climate change, environmental conflict and the Anthropocene.
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Catherine Queen
I am exploring the tensions between the normative expectations of infrastructure planning, as a collaborative process, and the hard-to-reach public’s expectations of justice and fairness. There is limited literature exploring participation in Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects, especially concerning publics who are involuntarily disengaged. I am using a Case Study approach, supported by qualitative methods of data collection, to identify the existing opportunities for public knowledge contributions and the barriers to participation for hard-to-reach groups or individuals. Focus groups, semi-structured interviews and walking interviews will help me to explore effective public engagement techniques focussing on the importance of place attachment.
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Dr Alice Venn
My research focuses on the protection of climate vulnerable states and communities under international law. It analyses key avenues within international environmental law, state responsibility and human rights law, capable of providing these states and communities with an effective remedy for losses incurred as a result of adverse climate change impacts. It is driven by a desire to contribute to the growing climate justice literature from an international legal perspective, taking into account the access to justice challenges which exist in practice. It includes a regional case study of the South Pacific, examining climate justice and the enforceability of international mechanisms at a more grassroots level.