Read profiles of members of the PBES Network – correct as of January 2014
Stanley currently works as a lecturer in the sociology department at the University of Manchester. He completed his PhD in 2013, which was a rhythmanalytical study of the routinisation and embodiment of 'leisure' practices. His research takes a distinctive approach to issues of social practice and time by challenging practice theorists to consider time as ongoing change when accounting for the emergence, persistence and desistence of social practices. Stanley is keen to further conceptually develop arguments around the relationship between practices and temporality, spatiality, routine, habit and embodiment.
Kathryn is a post-doc in the psychology department at the University of Essex. She's currently working on a multidisciplinary project funded by the EPSRC, which aims to develop and trial a new approach to domestic energy management that involves automation, monitoring and feedback components. To date, her work has included measuring heating practices using questionnaires, collecting appliance specific data using diaries, and analysing reviews of energy monitors. Kathryn is relatively new to the field of practices and is keen to learn more about the approach including how to ensure the theory has practical applications.
Anna is a historian currently working on practices involving energy use in the built environment. More specifically, she's studying the provision of energy using appliances in English council housing between circa 1920 and 1970, investigating questions like when and why coal fires were replaced with other kinds of heating and cooking appliances. She is particularly interested in how the provision of appliances and power supplies (ie the built environment) interacted with everyday practices, like space heating. Anna is also interested in how history interacts with contemporary issues, such as sustainability. Much of her postdoctoral work has been part of inter-disciplinary projects and she is currently developing further such projects.
Andrew is a research associate at UCL's new Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy where he contributes to the policy and governance stream of the Liveable Cities project. Here, he's developing a programme of research on the practices of city governance and policy-making, focusing on issues of sustainability and liveability – including how these goals transcend traditional sectorial distinctions and how to respond to this as a policy and governance challenge.
Andrew's previous doctoral research studied professional engineering practices in the global engineering and design consultancy, Arup, and explored the processes by which engineering and its outcomes become normatively shaped. This work produced a series of ethnographic studies of engineers-in-practice with a focus on the critical exploration of how engineers currently understand and engage with the appropriation of values in and through their work, particularly where this related to achieving sustainable futures.
Matt is a PhD candidate with the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, entering his final year. His background is in environmental engineering; however his research is firmly trans-disciplinary. In his research he explores the impact of living in grassroots sustainable housing communities, such as cohousing communities and eco-villages, on everyday consumption practices. The research has used a mix of qualitative (participant observation and interviews) and quantitative (ecological footprint data collection) methods, to focus on how more sustainable practices and routines are introduced, encouraged and/or developed within households and communities, while trying to understand the impact of these practices.
Chris is a research fellow at Anglia Ruskin's Global Sustainability Institute. He's an environmental social scientist with an interest in how sustainability-related interventions influence and are influenced by practices. His PhD (completed in 2013, UEA) considered how building homes to the Passivhaus energy efficiency standard influenced both household (eg thermal comfort) and professional (eg designing, constructing) practices. Current research foci include digital feedback technologies, smart cities, innovations in construction, as well as the continuation of his PhD interests. His research involves an array of qualitative (eg participant observation, interviews) and quantitative (eg building monitoring, appliance ownership, construction site) data.
Mary is a PhD researcher at the National University of Ireland, Galway, in the West of Ireland. Within the broad domain of sustainability transitions research, Mary is specifically interested in the interrelationships between the social-cultural and techno-material contexts of environmental change and factors influencing the dynamics and evolution of everyday consumption practices. She also has a strong interest in the development of innovative research methodologies for analysing social and cultural change in domestic, community and grassroots contexts.
Mary's current doctoral research study, Energy biographies: domestic practice over the life-course, is exploring everyday consumption practices from a life-course context. Addressing the dearth of research that examines consumption from a dynamic, contextual perspective, this research is adopting a multi-method suite of verbal, textual and visual narrative, life-course methods to explore the lived experiences of individuals, as skilled embodied agents acting in dynamic contexts, in their recursive engagement with, and performance of, practice over time.
Charlotte is a postdoctoral researcher at Aalborg University, Copenhagen. She researches production and consumption dynamics and their role in transitions towards sustainability. She has recently finished her PhD on social practices in which (energy efficient) lighting engages, and how lighting patterns emerge, change and disappear. Residential light and everyday life practices were a main focus, but in her post doc research, Charlotte is expanding focus to include studies on how various design perspectives on light has emerged, and what that means for the current development and policy processes of Danish lighting and lighting patterns. She's interested in looking into how a common 'language' of light, that includes technical, social, environmental and cultural aspects, can be facilitated, across for instance engineering, design and building construction practices. Theoretically, Charlotte works with theories of practice and consumption, transition frameworks (AoD vs. MLP) and STS approaches (mostly sociology of translation).
Ellis is a postdoctoral researcher based in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. From a built environment background, Ellis's experience includes applied research projects with industry and government partners in the UK and Australia. A core theoretical focus has been on social practices and interface with renovation/retrofitting and energy consumption. Research interests include energy efficiency, renovation/retrofitting, adoption and use of new technologies, and socio-technical approaches
Andrew is a lecturer in architecture and urbanism at the University of Manchester. He uses ideas from the social sciences and design disciplines to study sustainable cities and urban infrastructure. He is particularly interested in understanding how relations amongst nature, technology, and people are being reworked in pursuit of low-carbon futures.
Lenneke is a research associate in the geography department at the University of Sheffield. Coming from a background in industrial design engineering, she has a particular interest in the relations between the dynamics of energy demand, domestic practices and the development of material interventions. In her PhD thesis, Implications of Social Practice Theory for Sustainable Design, she explores the tension field between practice theory and a future orientation through a series of empirical design projects on bathing and staying warm at home. Her position is part of the EPSRC DEMAND centre, where she will build on her PhD work through exploring the relations between infrastructures and changes in domestic and personal transport practices.
Rachel will soon complete her PhD in the Science, Society and Sustainability (3S) group at the University of East Anglia (UEA). Her research has adopted both qualitative and quantitative techniques to develop a social practice-based account of low-carbon housing and domestic water and energy retrofit initiatives. Her current PhD research conceptualizes the 'Code for Sustainable Homes' building performance standard as a low-carbon intervention in housing design and construction practices. The implications of such a shift in practice are considered in terms of policy decision-making, the mainstream housing industry, and everyday domestic life.
Roxana Morosanu is an anthropologist researching domestic life, domestic practices and energy demand with UK families. She conducted her doctoral research at Loughborough University as part of an interdisciplinary project, the Low Effort Energy Demand Reduction (LEEDR) project. Her doctoral dissertation looks at modes of time-reckoning inside the home and digital media use.
Ida is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Product Design at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway. She holds a PhD from NTNU (2013), specialising in design for sustainability and the role of design and business activity in fostering less environmentally impacting everyday practices. Her current research is part of two different projects, where one addresses energy use and facilities management in non-residential buildings, and the other home medication, service innovation and procurement in Norwegian municipalities. Her research interests include design for sustainability, practice theory, system innovation theory, and sustainable consumption and production.
Sarah is a researcher at the Association for the Conservation of Energy (ACE), where she works on a wide range of social and policy issues around energy consumption, energy efficiency and fuel poverty. Before this, Sarah worked at Keele University on the project 'Reducing Energy Consumption through Community Knowledge Networks'. Her PhD, in social policy at York University, applied a social practice approach to sustainable lifestyles and their evolution over time. At present, she's especially interested in practices of thermal management in the home, and the skills and know-how involved.
Nicola is a senior research associate based in the DEMAND Centre at Lancaster University. Her research is concerned with how social practices change, especially the part that individual lives, institutions, the professions and policy play in these processes. She is currently researching these themes in relation to sustainability and climate change policy, looking at how the systems, structures and practices of the planning professions make and shape demand for energy and mobility.
Faye is currently writing up her PhD, which is using an ethnographic approach to explore the installation of central heating systems in domestic properties, and how this process may influence the system in use. More generally, her research interests lie in the use of a range of qualitative approaches and theoretical perspectives to understand practices in the built environment. Before her PhD, Faye completed a Masters in energy demand studies as part of the London-Loughborough Centre for Doctoral Training, and a Masters degree in chemistry at the University of York.
Lisa is a PhD candidate in the Resource Management and Environmental Studies program at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Before her PhD work, Lisa worked as a researcher on EUR-Adapt, a four-year project on multi-level governance in climate change adaptation out of Umea University in Sweden. Her PhD research shifts away from climate change policy to narrative place-based and practice-oriented approaches, thereby conceptualizing the climate change 'problem' as both a material and a socially-constructed phenomenon. Lisa also holds an MA in geography from the University of Guelph in Canada.