The promise and practice of spontaneous prose

Spontaneous prose can and should be used by non-representational geographers to creatively aid, inform and craft ethnographical analyses. Here, I propose that cultural and social geographers utilise this method, deployed from a genre of literature that characterised and defined the 1950s ‘Beat Generation’ of the United States, to aid in non-representational ethnographic note-taking by discussing the possible synergies between spontaneous prose and non-representational methodology, using an example from ethnographical research in the Norsk Oljemuseum, Stavanger, Norway

Scientising the ‘environment’: The School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, 1967-1990.

There is a major gap in science studies concerning how the ‘environment’ came to be known and governed through practices of science in the post-war United Kingdom. Yet the ‘sciences’ of the environment are the predominant means by which we have come to know challenges of environmental change. This thesis engages with history and geography of science, environmental history, and STS literature to question how the ‘environment’ became an object of thought for a new university, how new knowledge emerged as both a product of co-production and as a tool of co-production. The ‘environmental sciences’ emerged in response to the changing post-war world, continuing to respond and change with the world around them. I demonstrate this through four linked case-studies concerning the emergence and development of ENV between the 1960s and 1990s. I make three key contributions: I shed light on how different sciences and practices of interdisciplinarity emerged as constitutive of the ‘environmental sciences’ and how these diversities led to different forms of knowledge about different kinds of environmental change. Numerous cultures of ‘environmental’ knowledge bloomed in the ENV space but not necessarily in a unified or interdisciplinary way. I proffer an ‘ecology of co-production sensibility that demonstrates new conceptual links to offer a novel approach for research in science studies. I also illuminate how ENV as a historical space of ‘co-production’ responded to and shaped the world around it in politically and epistemically important ways. I conclude with a critical examination of the future direction in which ENV and the ‘environmental sciences’ might head in the ‘Anthropocene’

Science in the trading zone: Interdisciplinarity and the 'environment'

Interdisciplinarity continues to be a focus and method for complex social and environmental challenges. This paper explores how the School of Environmental Sciences (ENV) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) which was founded through the idea of scientific interdisciplinarity operated in practice to create new knowledge about a new object of concern, the ‘environment’. Using the ‘trading zone’ concept, the social and epistemic processes behind making scientific interdisciplinarity a material and institutional reality are uncovered, and to what extent interdisciplinary knowledge was actually produced. This paper concludes that interdisciplinary processes can be effective in dealing with complex challenges but often rely on the institutional and social dynamics of the researchers involved. Historicising interdisciplinarity in knowledge-making settings can go some way in supporting new interdisciplinary endeavours associated with environmental and climate research

Scientizing the ‘environment’: Solly Zuckerman and the idea of the School of Environmental Sciences

In 1960 Sir Solly Zuckerman proposed the idea of an interdisciplinary department of ‘environmental sciences’ (ENV) for the newly established University of East Anglia (UEA). Prior to this point, the concept of ‘environmental sciences’ was little known: since then, departments and degree courses have rapidly proliferated through universities and colleges around the globe. This paper draws on archival research to explore the conditions and contexts that led to the proposal of a new and interdisciplinary grouping of sciences by Zuckerman. It argues that the activities of Zuckerman and other scientists in Britain during the Second World War and in the post-war period helped to create fertile conditions for a new kind of scientific authority to emerge as a tool of governance and source of policy advice. In particular, the specific challenges of post-war Britain – as addressed through scientific advisers and civil servants – led to the ‘environment’ becoming both the subject of sustained scientific study and an object of concern

Environmentalism after the pandemic

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed the explosive emergence of environmentalism accompanied by increasingly influential scientific, regulative and managerial roles for the environmental sciences. Since then, there has been a comprehensive increase of awareness and understanding of a whole spectrum of global to local environmental and socio-cultural dilemmas. Environmentalism has experienced a complicated set of tendentious relations with the various forms of capitalism. We argue here that any transformation to truly sustainable futures requires either a transformative integration of green growth within a modified capitalism, or a progressive shift to radically new ways of experiencing and living around sustainable localism. The pandemic has brought the world extraordinarily almost to a halt. It has offered a unique opportunity to consider, debate, and possibly implement sustainable livelihoods in myriads of different cultural and political settings via progressive social, political and economic reforms. By reconceptualising historical ideas of environmentalism into a new set of global to local arrangements post-pandemic, we can begin to shape and to live into sustainability, ideally across the whole planet. It is vital to progress with hope and through the yearnings of young people, and not with despair and through degeneration by clinging onto the old ways

Public engagement with sustainable wastewater management and hydrogen technologies:Triple Carbon Reduction project report

This report presents the findings of the social science work package of the Triple Carbon Reduction project, a consortium led by Anglian Water and funded by the Water Breakthrough Challenge which aims to develop and demonstrate new technologies in wastewater processing to reduce process emissions, together with energy efficiency and renewable energy benefits. To do this the TCR project is seeking to generate green hydrogen from electrolysis of final effluent in one of Anglian Water’s wastewater treatment facilities using a novel biological treatment process, called MABR (Membrane Aerated Biofilm Reactor)

Ecologies of co-production in the Anthropocene

The urgency, uncertainty and unevenness of the Anthropocene has foregrounded the spatial and temporal multiplicity of co-production between science and society. In this article, we draw together work in geography, science and technology studies and cognate disciplines concerned with ‘co-producing’ knowledge for environmental governance, and with the ‘co-production’ of science and politics. Yet these existing studies and approaches have tended to focus on discrete moments of co-production within bounded time-spaces. Building on work associated with ecologies of participation and geographies of science, we introduce the notion of ‘ecologies of co-production’ as a way to more faithfully attend to multiple co-existing co-productions and the interrelations between them. We define this as diverse interrelating practices and spaces of co-production which intermingle and are co-produced with(in) wider systems and political cultures in which they are situated. We set out how this opens up new ways of thinking about and attending to the spaces and interrelations, diversities and exclusions, histories and constitutions, and responsibilities and affects of co-productions between science and society in the Anthropocene. We suggest that this approach can make a difference in how we do co-production, how we analyse co-production and how we live, act and figure in an Anthropocene world

Localising and democratising goal-based governance for sustainability

Accelerating social and environmental change raises pressing questions about how existing institutions can be reformed to mount a more effective response. In this context, goal-based governance has been widely adopted in order to mobilise existing bodies to agree shared goals and develop common purpose. Increasingly employed in sustainability governance at the international scale, goal-based governance concerns setting pan-organisational goals and mobilising to deliver them. There is growing recognition that this approach needs to be downscaled to the local level in ways that can increase democratic engagement in order to realise significant change. This paper examines the opportunities and challenges involved in doing this in Cornwall, UK. We draw on collaborative research with representatives from statutory organisations as well as civic and civil society to highlight: (1) the significance of institutional structures, culture and relationships; (2) the need to adopt innovative participatory methods to engage and enlist civic and civil society organisations in goal-setting; and (3) the importance of ensuring delivery. The paper explores the extent to which local institutions can engage in goal-based and collaborative governance to respond to the challenges of sustainability in ways that reflect specific geo-political and cultural contexts as well as responding to international demands for greater sustainability. The findings provide insights that have relevance for other contexts as local leaders experiment to better recognise, reflect and respond to the social, ecological and political challenges of our time

Let's 'do different': Planetary Citizen Education Proposal

BCAN, the Biodiversity and Climate Action Network, brings together students and staff at UEA committed to making UEA ‘walk the talk’ on the climate & biodiversity emergencies. The BCAN “Climate Education” working group has developed a series of pragmatic proposals for improving climate education at UEA. These proposals are based on research on other universities’ climate education work, on staff and student workshops (funded by the Chase Climate Justice Network) and on conversations with relevant bodies at UEA. Implementing these proposals will require a moderate level of resource commitment from central management. Not committing these resources puts UEA at significant risk of further falling behind others in the sector. The proposals in this report can be implemented swiftly and mostly be slotted into existing structures. They should be a starting point for more fundamental reforms in the near future. This report proposes that UEA widens, broadens, and deepens its climate education offer, by taking the steps outlined in detail in the graphic on the next page. The proposals in this report are based on a philosophy of interdisciplinary critical optimism that takes issues of climate avoidance and climate anxiety seriously, while equipping students with critical thinking skills and preparing them for taking action in the real world