Award No: RES 066 27 0015
2008-2012
Film of the Extraordinary Lecture
How social science can help climate change policy: an extraordinary lecture and accompanying exhibition of ideas held at the British Library 17th January 2011
Two short films that are included in the Extraordinary lecture (7 mins each):
captured by showering, absolutely not psychology
flipping habits in the kitchen
This 3 year ESRC funded climate change leadership fellowship addressed the need for new ways of framing problems of climate change, consumption and demand.
To date, governments have sought to improve the efficiency with which contemporary 'standards' of everyday life are maintained. It is now clear that policy and governance actors have to go further and that systemic transitions in practice - in patterns of sociability and mobility, and of comfort, cleanliness, food provisioning and leisure - are also required.
The fellowship was designed to:
1. Develop understanding of how complex systems of practice and consumption emerge, persist and disappear - and with what consequence for the spatial and temporal ordering of daily life and the potential for mitigating or adapting to climate change.
2. Extend the range of social theoretical input to climate change policy by generating and encouraging new forms of academic and non-academic interaction.
3. Discover how social scientific analyses of systemic transitions in practice have shaped climate change policy and governance in other countries and contexts - and what lessons can be learned for the UK.
Designed around a programme of research and writing, the fellowship involves running conferences, setting up a social-change climate-change working party and supervising two associated studentships.