Achieving pressing climate and biodiversity goals demands more than just technological and scientific innovation – it requires deep social, cultural, and political change. However, environmental challenges are often framed as technological and scientific ‘fixes’ that overlook these critical social dimensions, sidelining alternative knowledges and solutions. Ultimately, strengthening connections between people and nature must be at the heart of solutions to the biodiversity and climate crisis. This makes the social sciences – including geography, anthropology, history, arts, psychology, sociology, politics, and economics – vital for opening up alternative perspectives, pathways, and possibilities that foster justice and well-being for both humans and nature. This seminar will explore how integrating social sciences, alongside ecological and technological approaches, can stimulate new ways of understanding environmental challenges and develop more genuinely transformative solutions and real-world impact.
This panel brings together social science experts from a range of disciplines – Professor Patrick Devine-Wright (University of Exeter), Dr Beth Brockett (Forest Research), Professor Karen Jones (University of Kent), and Dr Eric Kumeh (University of Oxford) – to explore how more impactful, integrated and collaborative approaches are vital for tackling the poly-crisis of climate change, biodiversity decline, inequality and well-being issues. Drawing on their UK-based and internationally significant research spanning academia, policy, and practice, the panellists will discuss how the social sciences can open up new ways of thinking and innovative solutions to achieving transformative change in ways that are equitable and socially ‘just’. This includes championing inter- and transdisciplinary, more-than-human, and equitable approaches that embrace diverse forms of Indigenous, community-led, and place-based science and expertise.
Following a brief opening talk by Dr Constance McDermott, the seminar will feature short presentations by each panelist before opening up to an interactive discussion between the panel and the audience, led by Professor Michael Winter OBE. The event is being organised and co-facilitated by Dr Caitlin Hafferty.
Biographies
Professor Patrick Devine-Wright
Patrick Devine-Wright is Professor of Geography at the University of Exeter. An IPCC lead author in AR6, his research addresses social dimensions of climate change mitigation, including acceptance and justice dimensions of low carbon energy transitions, community engagement with infrastructure siting (e.g. wind energy, power lines, shale gas) and place attachment. He is Director of the £6.25m ESRC-funded ACCESS Network (Advancing Capacity for Climate and Environment Social Science), which aims to increase the visibility, impact and coordination of social science to address environmental challenges, through co-production with researchers and policy makers across the UK.
Professor Jamie Lorimer
Jamie Lorimer is Professor of Environmental Geography at the University of Oxford. His research explores public understandings of nature and how these come to shape environmental governance. Past projects have explored the histories, politics and cultures of wildlife conservation ranging across scales from elephants to the microbiome. Jamie is the author of Wildlife in the Anthropocene: Conservation after Nature (Minnesota, 2015), The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life (Minnesota, 2020) and More-than-Human (Routledge, 2024). His current research explores transitions in agriculture and conservation in the context of growing concerns about the relationships between farming, biodiversity loss and global heating.
Dr Beth Brockett
Beth Brockett works for Forest Research as a Senior Social Scientist. She is currently leading on research which includes developing a better understanding of community benefits from new tree planting and public values relating to trees outside of woodland. Beth previously worked for Natural England providing evidence for the Environmental Land Management Schemes programme, supporting Natural England in embedding an evidence-led, best-practice engagement organisational culture, and she spent time as the social science lead for the national People and Nature Survey. She has a particular interest in promoting the role of social science within the environmental sector and is involved in the multi-partner ACCESS project. Beth’s background is in human geography, ecology and soil science and she considers herself an interdisciplinary specialist. She has also previously worked as a farm conservation adviser, an academic researcher, and as a community development practitioner.
Dr Eric Kumeh
Eric Kumeh is a postdoctoral researcher focused on power and equity in land-use governance. Passionate about land access in rural Africa, questions how multi-level governance of nature recovery influences land-use choices and decisions among marginalized and underserved communities in mosaic landscapes, characterized by diverse and divergent interests, in low-income countries.
Professor Michael Winter OBE
Michael Winter OBE is the Glanely Professor of Agricultural Change at the University of Exeter based jointly in the Centre for Rural Policy Research and the Department of Geography. He was director of the CRPR from 2002 to 2017 and his career as a rural social scientist spans 45 years with numerous research reports, academic publications, and research grants. He has a long track record of policy engagement and has held many board and committee positions and chairmanships at both local and national levels, including being a board member of Natural England for 7 years until 2023 and of Rothamsted Research for nine years until 2023. Currently he chairs Devon Local Nature Partnership and Natural England Social Science Expert Panel.
Dr Constance McDermott
Constance L. McDermott is an Associate Professor and Jackson Senior Fellow at Oriel College and the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), University of Oxford. She is also leader of ECI’s Land Society and Governance Programme. Her work spans the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa and addresses the linkages among diverse local, regional and global priorities for land use, forests, and climate mitigation and adaptation. She examines both new and old institutions of land use governance, from market-based initiatives such as forest and carbon certification to sovereign state-based and traditional community-based approaches, to better understand how dynamics of trust and power shape environmental and social policies and facilitate or inhibit desired outcomes. Recent research directions include the study of carbon and natural capital markets, and supply chain policies, such as the EUDR, and their intersection with alternative and community-based approaches.
Dr Caitlin Hafferty
Caitlin Hafferty does research on the governance, politics, and democratic participation aspects of nature recovery and Nature-based Solutions. She conducts transdisciplinary research that is theoretically-informed and has real-world impact, working in collaboration with government, private business, charities, social enterprises, and community organisations, primarily within a UK context. Her current postdoctoral research, funded by the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, explores how nature recovery initiatives can be governed in more participatory and collaborative ways for transformative change towards multiple sustainability objectives, and the impact of private carbon and nature markets in shaping this.
The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Biodiversity Network are interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery/Biodiversity Network, or its researchers.
