Grania Power
Grania Power is a PhD researcher in the School of Global Development and the Tyndall Centre at the University of East Anglia. Grania is an anthropologist with an interest in the social construction of landscapes, paradigms of land management, and community-centered fire management, conservation, rewilding, and agriculture. Outside of academia Grania has worked on smallholding farms, and in theatre arts, literary publishing, and outdoor and arts education. She holds a master’s degree in cultural anthropology (University College Cork, Ireland), and a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and natural history (Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts).
Q: What is your research about?
My PhD project is called “Following the light: using ‘brightspots’ to prevent future Amazonian fires.” In it I have the opportunity to work collaboratively with researchers in the UK and Brazil, using geospatial and ethnographic research methods to identify and learn from communities in the Amazon rainforest who are successfully preventing or containing forest fires. These communities represent “brightspots” for fire management, positive case studies that we hope can help to inform policy for more equitable and effective fire management in the Amazon. Soon I will have the opportunity to go to Brazil to meet with collaborators at the Brazilian Centro Nacional de Monitoramento e Alertas de Desastres Naturais (CEMADEN), and to conduct fieldwork with communities in the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve, a traditional land management reserve in the northern Amazon.
Q: What got you into this field of research?
Growing up in Maine with a family farm and working on farms in France in my late teens, I witnessed some of the systemic challenges that smallholding farmers can encounter when working to protect local and global food security, biodiversity, and traditional knowledge. In particular I saw farmers struggling to compete financially with large, well-subsidized agricultural corporations that kept their cost of food production low by externalizing their costs into the surrounding environment and communities. Mono-cropping practices propped up by the heavy application of chemical fertilizers, for example, create large profit margins for the producers– but can lead to health hazards for farm workers and surrounding communities, chemical runoff into nearby water bodies, contamination of the soil, and depletion of the genetic biodiversity in food crops that protects our local and global food supplies from disease. This is what is meant by “externalized costs” in large-scale profit driven agriculture – and competing with this model represents a real challenge for smallholder farmers who choose to bear themselves the cost of using clean, sustainable farming practices. I became interested in avenues to policy change and community organizing to support smallholding farmers, and more broadly to support livelihoods based on skilled land management and mutual care within communities. This led me into food justice organising and environmental studies, and eventually some time later into landscape anthropology.
Q: Who/what inspires you to do this work?
I am inspired by the people I have met who construct their daily lives, economies, and worldviews around care for each other, other living beings, and future generations of life. These include indigenous communities and guardians of rivers and forests, smallholding farmers and rural communities, seed saving and reforestation initiative groups, and others who show through their lives and works that although we can become enmeshed in systems of resource extraction and a belief in a fundamental divide between humans and “nature,” the extractive domination of the world around us is not a necessary or permanent part of the human experience. There are still many worlds, and many ways of being in them. To paraphrase David Graeber, human beings are in fact much more interesting, creative, and full of care and agency than (other) human beings are sometimes inclined to imagine.
Q: Why did you choose the Tyndall Centre to do your PhD?
The Tyndall Centre provides excellent opportunities for PhD students – to join multidisciplinary climate research groups, take part in the Tyndall Early Career Researchers network, attend and deliver seminars, and have a voice in the priorities of the network. In my case I have had the opportunity to join the research clusters “Achieving Wellbeing Through Climate Action” and “Building up Resilience,” and to present on my PhD research to senior researchers at a Tyndall Assembly.
Q: Do you have any advise for those who want to do a PhD?
Although we usually think of it as a solitary endeavor, no one can do a PhD alone. It is important for both your health and your research that you keep in touch with people who support you. Maintain regular contact with your friends and family, while also nurturing your new relationships with other PhD students and your supervisors. It can be very hard to ask others for help, but you will need to do it often in order to succeed – and you will find that others are happy to share their expertise and experience. Come into your new academic community with the mindset of working collaboratively and helping others succeed, and letting their help and feedback improve your own work.
Ruth Larbey
Ruth Larbey is a first-year PhD researcher in the 3S research group at the University of East Anglia (UEA), and is supported by the South East Network for Social Sciences (SENSS). Her project sits at the science-policy-society interface and explores decision-making around tree planting for climate change mitigation in the UK. Ruth is undertaking a part-time PhD, while also working in a policy role for the National Landscapes Association, a charity dedicated to supporting the UK’s network of National Landscapes and other protected areas.
Q: What is your research about?
It’s about tree planting for climate change mitigation. ‘Net zero’ emissions targets generally presume that we need large-scale, land-based carbon dioxide removal via tree-planting. This is expected to increase competition for land, with long-term implications for biodiversity and food production. So, making good decisions around these competing demands for land is critical.
I’m looking at spatial tree-planting assessments, such as woodland creation sensitivity maps or soil carbon assessments, which guide decisions about the best places to plant trees. I’m interested not only in the information they provide, but also the way they are used to decide what to do in the present by making inferences about the future. I intend to investigate what kind of future is being created through current assessments, and what’s missing from these formal assessments. I’m interested in supporting policy reflexivity – the ability for policymaking to learn and grow. I’m aiming to understand how mapping more diverse assessments of afforestation and reforestation can contribute to new forms and practices of responsible assessment.
Q: What got you into this field of research?
I’ve had ‘deep ecological’ or ecocentric views for as long as I can remember – the sense that we should view nature not as an external resource but as something that has an intrinsic value, something internal. I also find the real-world consequences of legal mechanisms and policymaking fascinating and I have become very invested in improving the feedback loops and the responsibility/power dynamics between environmental policies, science and society. My thesis for my Masters degree in Environmental Law focused on the distant environmental impacts and connectivity produced by the EU Timber Regulation (2010), then, as Managing Editor of a European environmental science-policy project, I worked to produce several in-depth scientific reports on topics around ecosystem services, natural capital, nature-based solutions and forests. Together, these strands consolidated my feeling that I wanted to take my learning in this area further. After over a decade of consideration it finally all clicked into place with a combination of topics that speaks to my particular passions and curiosity. Assessments of tree-planting for climate change mitigation offers a great case of these dynamics at play.
Q: Who/what inspires you to do this work?
I think it’s fair to say I’m deeply invested in trees, forests and the life they support – for their own sake, not only as a resource – and I’m also keenly interested in keeping our planet human-habitable for many years to come. I see that the effects of climate change will run deep and require a radical reordering of many elements of our economies and societies, especially in the Global North, and I don’t think our decision-making systems have caught up with that reality yet. The technological framing of trees as a ‘climate solution’ is both interesting and troubling, and some of the risks of this framing are that alternative paths remain unexplored and that the responsibility and benefits of this ‘technology’ are not shared equally. How to make responsible decisions under conditions of uncertainty is one of the key challenges of our time, and our ability to do this or not will have long-reaching effects on future generations. I’d really like to see much more long-term environmental decision-making, empowerment and responsibility in my lifetime.
Q: Why did you choose the Tyndall Centre to do your PhD?
I am based in the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA, in the 3S research group, and the close connection with the Tyndall Centre was one of the key factors that made me decide to undertake the PhD at UEA. I had frequently come across the impact of Tyndall-based research in my environmental science-policy work before applying for the PhD. My research interests sit at the nexus between environmental and climate policies, science, and society; the Tyndall Centre is so interdisciplinary, and hosts such a vast variety of perspectives on climate research, it is an excellent place to gain knowledge and build a cross-cutting knowledge base and network. I chose the 3S research group to do my PhD not only because of their links to the Tyndall Centre, but also because they are doing cutting-edge research around public participation in climate decision-making, especially around energy transitions, and their work has been empowering a wider set of alternative options for the future. I was thrilled to find out there were researchers working in such an interdisciplinary way, experimenting to democratise environmental decision-making, and I wanted to transfer some of those learnings to tree-planting assessments. I also really appreciate the Tyndall Centre’s focus on catalysing change, and so far, it also seems like a supportive environment for early-career researchers.
Q: Do you have any advice for those who want to do a PhD?
The supervisory relationship is really important. I would say figuring out what you want and need in a supervisory team and finding supervisors that you get on with on an interpersonal level is really worth doing before applying. Starting my PhD journey ten months after becoming a first-time mum has been a challenge, and some days I feel like I’m still finding my balance. However, it’s a challenge that has been extremely rewarding so far. I’m finding lots of benefits of practicing mindfulness – remaining in the present, doing conscious mental housekeeping, concentrating on trying to make some PhD progress every day. For any parents or part-timers out there who are also switching their brain each day between parenting-mode, PhD-mode and work-mode, I’d like to send you solidarity! Learning how to say a guilt-free ‘no’ to the many opportunities coming my way has definitely helped. Having a strong purpose around why I want to do this PhD helps a lot to remain committed and focused. I’d also recommend figuring out not only what knowledge you want to gain, but what type of work you enjoy and want more training in, and, if you can, design your PhD to accommodate that.
