Visiting staff

The GSI has benefited from working in collaboration with various Visiting Staff from across a range of academic disciplines and vocational backgrounds. Visiting status is conferred by the Faculty, and all staff sit within one of our three key research themes.

Nigel Cooper

Rev Canon Nigel Cooper joined the Global Sustainability Institute as a Visiting Fellow in 2014. He has been the University Chaplain for Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge since 2005, a post he still holds. He was rector of Rivenhall and Silver End, Essex, for many years before that, and a visiting fellow at Essex University. Nigel is an Honorary Canon of Ely Cathedral.

Nigel has combined his ecological and church interests in four main ways: Ecological consultant to the Church of England; Promoting general environmental awareness and behaviour; Encouraging a spiritual approach to nature and has led ‘nature and spirit’ retreats, and; Research into the philosophy of nature conservation and related topics.

Bob Evans

In the 1960s Dr Robert (Bob) Evans counted sheep for two years in the Peak District: there were too many of them and they created bare soil and caused erosion. Bob came to Cambridge in late 1968 to research the use of remote sensing techniques for mapping soils. So started a lifetime of monitoring soil erosion in the UK. Much of the work on erosion in Britain was initiated by a short paper published by Bob in 1971. In the mid-1980s he organised a scheme monitoring water erosion of arable land in 17 localities in lowland England and Wales. Because, uniquely, there has been much monitoring of erosion in farmers’ fields in Britain, we can compare that information with modelled information and have discovered that models overstate erosion. 

Bob has been an independent consultant since the late 1980s, most of that time also being a Research or Visiting Fellow in Cambridge Universities. He has worked with government departments, the Environment Agency, a major NGO, companies, farmers and the NFU and on university research contracts, as well as being an expert witness in court. His work in the uplands helped bring about changes in national grazing policy and he was an advisor to the Royal Commission on environmental pollution when it produced its report on Sustainable Use of Soil in 1996. Bob now considers that soil erosion, although a problem over the long-term (in causing the loss of a resource) and short-term (causing pollution of water courses by sediment), nutrients and pesticides transported from the land in runoff is the more pressing issue.

Sarah Hafner

Sarah is a research fellow at the ZHAW School of Engineering, where she investigates energy system transitions, applying system dynamics modelling. In her research, Sarah applies a special focus on the simulation of socio-economic dynamics (e.g. barriers and enablers of different low-carbon energy technologies) and solutions that tackle identified barriers (e.g. new policies, regulations or business models). Previously, she was a postdoc research fellow at the Global Sustainability Institute (GSI) at Anglia Ruskin University (UK) and contributed to the BEIS-funded research project ‘Economics of Energy Innovation and System Transition’.

Sarah has a background in economics (MSc) and system dynamics (MSc). Sarah’s ESRC-funded PhD investigated policy interventions to scale-up green finance into renewable energy infrastructure and the related macroeconomic implications thereof, using an own developed system dynamics energy-economy model.

Prior to her PhD, Sarah has worked at the Swiss Statistical Office and the German ‘Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)’. She has also held a position as lecturer at the Department of Economics and International Business at Anglia Ruskin University.

Her key research interests include: Climate Economics; energy-economy modelling; sustainable finance; energy transitions; energy innovation; system dynamics; complexity and systems thinking; socio-technical frameworks. Find Sarah on LinkedIn

Roberto Pasqualino

Dr Roberto Pasqualino is a Visiting Fellow at the GSI, working on the science-policy interface to support systems transformation towards a more just and sustainable society. Roberto's interdisciplinary background combines extensive training in complexity science, finance, mathematics, computer sciences, dynamic systems modelling, economics and public policy.

Roberto has experience in research projects starting with designing Energy Aware Information Systems within (National Cluster for Intelligent Factories, Ministry of Research & Innovation, Italy), PhD in global system modelling and sustainability (Global Resource Observatory, Peter Dawe Charitable Trust, UK), Researcher Fellow in multi-country financial modelling (CUSP, ESRC funded, UK) and energy policy and innovation (EEIST, BEIS and CIFF Funded, UK). Roberto's research brings together contributions from the fields of complex theory, finance, dynamic systems modelling and technological innovation, to study the intervention points that trigger self-reinforcing change in systems of governance to catalyse the transition to a sustainable economy.

Stacia Ryder

Stacia Ryder is a postdoctoral researcher in the Geography Department at the University of Exeter and a co-founder of the Center for Environmental Justice at Colorado State University. She received her PhD in Sociology in 2019 from Colorado State University. Her research focuses on temporality, spatiality, scale and mechanisms of power in environmental, energy and climate justice contexts. Her dissertation work explores how power exacerbates issues of environmental justice in shale development in the Colorado Front Range. As a postdoctoral researcher, she works on an interdisciplinary research project exploring changes in UK public attitudes to shale gas and climate change across time and spatial scales. Other research proposals she currently co-leads are focused on household energy security and COVID-19, geothermal energy, and decarbonisation and just transitions in industrial sectors.

Stacia uses a critical and intersectional justice lens to examine how power dynamics create justice issues in environmental, energy and climate conflicts and decision-making processes. She has authored or co-authored ten journal articles, three book chapters, and three book reviews on such subjects. In addition to recently publishing works focused on environmental and climate justice, Stacia has also recently co-edited two special issues on power and environmental justice for the journal Environmental Sociology and is the lead editor of a new edited volume, called “Environmental Justice and the Anthropocene: From Unjust Presents to Just Futures.” Stacia has previously served as the Assistant Editor for Society & Natural Resources, as well as on the Fort Collins Women’s Commission and Community Development Block Grant Commission (Colorado, USA). She currently is a Director for Exeter Community Energy. Her approach to research is focused on creating concrete social change, working in partnership with communities to challenge status quo policies that often favour already powerful actors (i.e. oil and gas operators) in decision-making processes. Moving forward, she plans to continue to explore environmental justice issues in the context of energy and climate change, focusing on pro-active planning for disaster and climate displacement and whole community resettlement. She aims to centre just and equitable transitions as essential components of climate planning and policy.

Daniela Zingler

Daniela is a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research . Her focus lies on modeling sustainable system transformations. Previously, she worked for three years as a Senior Consultant at PwC in the Sustainability Services and Climate Change team. She advised companies on sustainability issues and analyzed the financial impact of climate risks and opportunities on business models. She gained further professional experience at the World Bank in Washington DC in the field of carbon pricing and worked for the European Commission in Brussels on climate change adaptation topics. Daniela studied Technology and Management (BSc) and Sustainable Resource Management (MSc) with a focus on environmental economics and policy at the Technical University of Munich. During her studies, she spent semesters abroad in Dublin and Barcelona.