The 2016 seminars were:
21st Jan: Cllr Jon Barry, Lancaster City Green Councillor and Mayor of Lancaster.
Title: Greening Lancaster – 25 years of trials, tribulations and occasional successes
Since 1987, Jon Barry has been a Green activist, councillor, cabinet member and mayor in Lancaster. He describes some of the Green, community and sustainable successes and failures along the way. He also explores how deep any changes have been and what their prospects are for the future. He attempts as many funny stories as he can fit in to the time. Jon worked at the University between 1987 and 1999. He now works for the Centre for Fisheries, Aquaculture and Environment Science, based in Lowestoft (don’t ask).
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11th Feb: Nadine Andrews, HighWire CDT
Title: Psychosocial factors influencing responses to ecological crisis: defences, needs and frames
People don’t always act in accordance with their values. In this seminar I identify and discuss psychosocial factors influencing responses to ecological crisis in organisational contexts, which is under-explored in sustainability and environmental research. Psychosocial factors are psychological processes that interact with social factors to influence cognition and behaviour. Drawing on the findings of an empirical transdisciplinary study into the lived experience of sustainability managers and leaders in their work to influence pro-environmental decision-making in their organisations, I show how psychosocial processes may interact to create tensions within the individual. How these tensions are negotiated has implications for effectiveness in responding adaptively to ecological crisis. I focus particularly on the dynamics between psychological threat defences/coping strategies, psychological needs and motivation, and cognitive frames.
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10th Mar 2016: Dr Dmitry Yumashev, Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business, LUMS.
Slides:
Modelling Global Risks of Climate Change – Dmitry Yumashev – edited
Location: C37/40 Charles Carter Building Time: 12.00-13.30
Title: Modelling Global Risks of Climate Change
Climate change caused by multiple emissions accompanying our economic activities is now widely understood to be the biggest force that has potential to exacerbate the existing problems facing mankind and negatively affect the prospects of long-term socioeconomic development globally. The recent Paris Agreement has provided the first comprehensive roadmap of its kind which could serve to achieve substantial cuts in global emissions in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The policy changes pledged by the individual countries as part of the Paris Agreement are based on a wide range of modelling studies spanning across the fields of climate science and economics, and their successful implementation relies on management studies tackling the required behavioural changes in individuals and organisations. The work on all these fronts is very much ongoing; in particular, further quantitative assessments of the underlying risks are needed to narrow down the multiple uncertainties and design more effective policies to deal with climate change. In this talk I am going to describe some of the modelling approaches that are being used in shaping climate policy, and will present the latest results of our work at the Pentland Centre aiming to put a global price tag on the rapidly warming Arctic.
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17th Mar 2016: Dr Gerald Aiken, University of Luxembourg
Location: D38/41 Charles Carter Building Time: 12.00-13.30
Title: The Politics of Community Low Carbon Transitions
Taking the title in reverse order this talk first outlines low carbon transition, the system-wide transformation necessary to address the 21st century’s greatest challenges: climate change, peak oil and social and environmental injustices. These challenges are multifaceted, complex and wicked. Increasingly ‘community’ is seen as a major solution by a variety of actors: academics, states and grassroots participants. So secondly, it looks to the increasing positing of community as a site of great promise in this transition. Community is understood variously here, and I will discuss the varieties of community on offer and attempt to understand why community has achieved such prominence.
Lastly then the talk will address the politics of community low carbon transitions. These are the tensions that arise within the state-sponsored use of community to meet the low carbon challenge. It is these tensions that I find most interesting. Community action is rarely smooth, and tensions exist and can emerge within these groups over vision, level of community coherence, and how definite or wide a community’s border should be. But differences also emerge between these groups and their outside. Community has been seen as a form of governmentalisation, getting citizens to behave. In this case to lead more disciplined carbon lives. Some have called the use of community to meet the low-carbon challenge post-political: smothering collective action with a blanket of well-meaning, but inoperative belonging. These tensions also include the difference in subjectivities imagined between those participants and funders of the low carbon communities. The talk is wide-ranging, but specific themes will be described with examples from the types of low carbon communities I have worked with previously: Transition Towns, CRAG’s, and Carbon Conversations.
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28th April 2016: Professor Minna Halme, Aalto University School of Business, Finland(Visiting Professor, Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business, LUMS)
Location: C37/40 Charles Carter Building Time: 12.00-13.30
Title: Our collaborative future: Activities and roles of stakeholders in sustainability-oriented innovation
Abstract: While stakeholders have long been at the forefront of corporate sustainability debates, the emphases have tended to be on stakeholder pressures, or conflict in the management of controversial issues. In this paper we ask how different stakeholders such as NGOs, end users and academic institutions, can contribute to sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) in firms. Based on 76 semi-structured interviews, we conduct a fine-grained qualitative analysis of stakeholder activities in SOI processes in thirteen different companies across Europe. Our analysis identifies eight roles that stakeholders play in SOI processes: stimulator, initiator, broker/mediator, concept refiner, legitimator, educator, context enabler and impact extender. More traditional roles such as legitimator and educator are less common in our cases. However, emerging roles such as the stimulator, concept refiner, context enabler and impact extender are clearly identifiable and could be particularly valuable for SOI. We argue that secondary stakeholders may actually be more relevant for SOI than primary stakeholders and can play a highly collaborative role.
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Mon 9th May 2016: Professor Gail Whiteman, Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business, LUMS & LEC.
Location: LUMS LT06 Time: 14.00-15.30
Title: How do companies make collective sense of sustainability challenges? Using Science-based boundary objects to guide action
Abstract: The growing instability of our planet’s ecological system poses an existential threat to humanity, and corporations play an immense role in shaping the earth system. This study thus examines the process of cross-organizational sensemaking between corporate actors and environmental scientists collaborating to meet sustainability grand challenges at the global scale. We analyze an ambitious joint effort by the world’s premier business association for sustainability – The World Business Council for Sustainable Development – and a globally prominent environmental research network to develop Action2020, a worldwide platform for advancing environmental business policy and practice. We consider how this collaboration was enabled and challenged via the use of a science-based boundary object – The Planetary Boundaries Framework – to facilitate sensemaking for sustainability. Collaborations of this type at this scale may be increasingly important for promoting sustainable environmental futures but are extremely rare and usually confidential. This is the first investigations of macro-scale cross-organizational sensemaking to address grand challenges of sustainability, and to relate the difficulties and affordances associated with using a science-based boundary object to do so. We thus provide a unique window into the inner workings of important but typically tightly controlled interactions.
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Thursday 12th May 2016: SR+ Planning meeting
Location: A15 Charles Carter Building Time: 12.00 – 1.30
Please email d.oreilly@lancaster.ac.uk for further details
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Thursday 2nd June 2016: Dr Jessica Davies, Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business, LEC.
Location: C37/40 Charles Carter Building Time: 12.00-13.30
Title: Interdisciplinary dirt: Soil sustainability as an interdisciplinary interface
Abstract: Soils are the foundations for life. Soils provide the vast majority of our food, they provide fibres that clothe us and play an increasingly important role in meeting our energy needs (i.e. biocrops). Soils filter and regulate flows of freshwater and are an important store of carbon in our earth system. They also support a huge wealth of biodiversity and are crucial to ecosystem functioning. As such, soil sustainability is key to the future of our ecosystems, climate, communities and economies. However, soils are under increasingly under threat from land use and management pressures and changing climate. These multiple soil functions and multiple soil threats – in addition to the fact that soil itself emerges from the interaction of biology, chemistry and physics – makes soil sustainability an interdisciplinary challenge.
Jess Davies is a new lecturer at the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business . Her research aims to advance our understanding of the sustainability of soils and the multiple services they provide, and she is interested in finding new ways of integrating this knowledge into decision-making. In this seminar, Jess will give a brief introduction to her research before opening up the seminar to a broader discussion on soil, its importance to society, and the potential for bringing together different perspectives and knowledge in attaining soil sustainability.
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2015/2016 seminars and events:
15th Oct: SR+ review:
The purpose of the meeting was to review the past and current intentions and activities of the network, and to discuss its potential future role. In order to do so:
- We began with a number of the past and current organisers describing their understanding of the network’s intentions and activities alongside inputs from some members who were not able to attend;
- In order to inform our discussions on the future of the network we then had some overviews of other activities in Lancaster University related to sustainability and responsibility (the Global Futures talks; the Institute for Social Futures; activities that Facilities have been involved in, including Green Huddle and Green Lancaster; and the Pentland Centre);
- We then had some small group discussions on the potential future role of the network, and also did a preliminary mapping of other related activities in Lancaster University, and the Lancaster area.
The notes circulated to the network summarise the main inputs and ideas, and list the suggested potential roles for the Network. They also include the preliminary mapping of other related activities in Lancaster University, and the Lancaster area.
Next steps: The notes were distributed to the network, and we invite further comments, suggestions, and information. We have a number of seminars already organised for the upcoming year which we will be running. If we receive further comments and suggestions in the next couple of weeks, we will collate these and circulate mid-November, after which we will organise a ‘planning’ meeting towards the beginning of next term where we will invite people to sign up to activities in which they are interested – some of which may be spin-off groups/activities.
For info on past talks, meetings, etc., see: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/srnetwork/
2015-16 Schedule: all Thursdays, 12.00-13.30 (check individual listings on Home page for location)
12th Nov: Dr Noel Cass, DEMAND Centre (Dynamics of Energy, Mobility and Demand), FASS. Title: “‘It’s the market, stupid!’: Exploring the barriers to low energy office buildings”
3rd Dec: Dr Carmen Dayrell, CASS Centre (ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science) (with John Urry and Tony McEnery). Title: Changing Climates: Discourses around climate change in the British and Brazilian news media
21st Jan: Cllr Jon Barry, Lancaster City Green Councillor and Mayor of Lancaster. Title: “Greening Lancaster – 25 years of trials, tribulations and occasional successes”
11th Feb: Nadine Andrews, HighWire CDT. Title: “Psychosocial factors influencing responses to ecological crisis: defences, needs and frames”
10th Mar: Dr Dmitry Yumashev, LUMS, Pentland Centre. Title: Modelling Global Risks of Climate Change
17th Mar: Dr Gerald Aiken, University of Luxembourg. Title: The Politics of Community Low Carbon Transitions
28th April: Professor Minna Halme, Aalto University School of Business, Finland. Title: Our collaborative future: Activities and roles of stakeholders in sustainability-oriented innovation
9th May: Professor Gail Whiteman, Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business, LUMS & LEC. Title: How do companies make collective sense of sustainability challenges? Using Science-based boundary objects to guide action
2nd June: Dr Jessica Davies, LEC, Pentland Centre. Title: Interdisciplinary dirt: Soil sustainability as an interdisciplinary interface