I have been a member of faculty in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia since April 2016, and a member of the 3S (Science, Society & Sustainability) Research Group since 2011. I am an environmental geographer and science & technology studies scholar interested in the relationships between science, democracy and the environment. My research develops new ways for organisations to listen and respond to public engagement. It has demonstrated that organisations must pay attention to diverse public engagement in an ongoing and systemic manner, rather than relying on one-off public engagement events to inform decisions. I led the Just Public Algorithms project (2019-20), which mapped wide-ranging public concerns about the use of algorithms in UK public services, and the social science component of the Triple Carbon Reduction project (2022-3), which fed public concerns into an innovation process around a novel wastewater management technology. I am the deputy lead of the UK Energy Research Centre’s Public Engagement Observatory (2019-present) which has developed new conceptual and methodological approaches to mapping public engagement with climate change and energy in the UK, to enable just and sustainable transitions. I also helped to found the Natural England Public Engagement Laboratory for Nature and Society, which experiments with public engagement with nature.

My PhD thesis, undertaken at the University of East Anglia and completed in 2014, looked at organisational learning from and about public participation in the UK Government-funded body Sciencewise. From January 2015 - March 2016 I was a senior research associatte at the University of East Anglia, working with Jason Chilvers and Tom Hargreaves on a Systemic participation and decision making in UK energy transitions, a UKERC-funded project which involved mapping diverse forms of public participation around the UK energy system 2010-2015, and experimenting with new approaches to public engagement. 

I teach on the Sustainability and Society MSc programme leading the module 'Sustainability, Science and Society in Practice' where students engage in and reflect on real-world interventions to improve relations between science and society in the context of sustainability. I also contribute to the Geography BA and BSc undergraduate programmes.

I am currently collaboratively supervise 4 PhD researchers conducting projects relating to climate policy, public engagement, sustainability, and emerging technologies.

I am the People, Culture and Environment Champion for the School of Environmental Sciences, which involves championing initiatives to improve research culture and sustainability in the School and across UEA. 

Current project:

My current work is as part of the UK Energy Research Centre's Public Engagement Observatory of which I am the deputy director. In the Observatory we are mapping public engagement with energy and climate in the UK, experimenting with new approaches to public engagement in this space, and developing new ways to communicate our findings with a range of different actors and organisations.  

Research interests: Public participation and engagement; science policy; science & technology studies; human geography; democracy; organisational learning; reflexivity; co-production; experimentation;  energy politics; democratic innovation; sustainable innovation.

Research group: Science, Society & Sustainability (3S) group 

I am keen to hear from prospective PhD students with interests in public engagement in relation to sustainability and emerging technologies.