Dr. Phedeas Stephanides is a Senior Research Associate in Norwich Business School (NBS), and part-time Lecturer in Human Geography in the School of Environmental Sciences (ENV), University of East Anglia (UEA).
His research and teaching focuses on societal engagement with sustainability and draws on insights from across the environmental social sciences – and especially human and economic geography, sociology and science and technology studies (STS). Following the completion of his PhD research on community currencies developed in the wake of the Greek economic crisis as tools for sustainable degrowth (2017), he has moved on to develop his interest in societal engagement with sustainability through the investigation of grassroots sustainability innovations, environmental movements, socio-technical energy transitions, and through the exploration of diverse forms of energy democracy. Across these areas, his research engages closely with contemporary human/economic geography and environmental social science debates on: a) practice-focused research on the everyday geographies of sustainability; b) geographies of hope and participation; c) the realpolitik of environmental movements; d) the spatial politics of participatory sustainability transitions; and e) attendant questions of power and environmental/ energy justice.
As a Senior Research Associate, he has previously contributed to the successful completion of the internationally acclaimed TILOS-Horizon 2020 project – leading an innovative, participatory, multi-criteria option appraisal of energy futures for Greek islands and research on public acceptance of sustainable energy technologies. He is currently co-leading research on Work Package 5 of the Intelligent Community Energy (ICE) project focusing on consumer engagement around sustainable energy transitions in isolated territories. This research draws on primary empirical data from two pilot demonstration sites – namely the UEA campus and the island of Ushant – and aims to track the journey of the host communities through the envisioned energy transitions: the ecologies of participation and emerging everyday engagements with the novel energy technologies introduced.
As a Lecturer in the School of Environmental Sciences, UEA, he contributes to a number of key modules of the BA Geography course of the School. These include, inter alia, the MBA/M.Res/M.Sc module on ‘Sustainable Consumption,’ the ‘Energy and People’ 3rd year module, the ‘Constructing Human Geographies’ 2nd year module, and the ‘Sustainability, Society and Biodiversity,’ the ‘Geographical Perspectives,’ and the ‘Human Geographies of a Changing World’ 1st year modules.
