Accelerating social change

Within this theme, we expressly focus on the importance of people, organisations, lifestyles and consumption in addressing the climate crisis.

By investigating the diverse roles that people play in climate action, e.g. as consumers, citizens, professionals, policymakers, carers, and role models for others, our interdisciplinary research advocates for transformative social change to address the climate crisis, with a view to reducing emissions in high-emitting countries and groups, and adapting to climate change for vulnerable places and people.

We will investigate how transformative change has occurred in the past and how it can be enabled and accelerated in the future across a range of topics, such as energy production, material consumption, mobility, water, food and diet. This work will range from analysing the efficacy of behavioural interventions at the individual level through to systematic approaches that alter broader technological landscapes and prevailing legal and policy frameworks. We aim to be policy relevant while also critically examining and challenging assumptions about current approaches to climate action, through research on more radical and far-reaching solutions (e.g. activism and alternative economic models).

We will interrogate social discourses to understand people’s perspectives on the climate crisis and to anticipate ways that ideas and narratives both hinder and enable climate action. Using a variety of different methods (qualitative and quantitative), we aim to envision what everyday life could look like in decarbonised futures, recognising the many different ways of living within society today. We will investigate what is needed to transition from high- to low-carbon lifestyles, how to design and implement transformative policies and interventions, and how to popularise and embed low-carbon ways of living in the UK and beyond.