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PhD research

Examining the role of anticipatory knowledge in institutional change

November 16, 2015 / Leave a Comment

Initially major motivations for doing my PhD research were to contribute to the evidence base that underpins ‘foresight’ work (given that formal evaluations are rarely conducted and practitioners rarely have the time or the capacity to do this research), and to contribute to a better understanding of the roles such tools and practices can play … [Read more…]

Posted in: Anticipatory action, PhD research, Sustainability issues Tagged: institutional change, PhD research

The politics of ‘green transformations’ and efforts to realise them

October 10, 2015 / Leave a Comment

The politics of green transformations is increasingly a key theme in sustainability-related research and books. Recently published examples include The Politics of Green Transformation (edited by Scoones et al., 2015), The Politics of Sustainability: Philosophical Perspectives (edited by Birnbacher & Thorseth, 2015), The Politics of “Big Brand Sustainability” (Dauvergne & Lister, 2014), Frank Geels’ recent … [Read more…]

Posted in: PhD research, Sustainability issues Tagged: PhD research, sustainability science, transitions

Reflecting on my personal journey – from ‘foresight’ practices to the sociology of prospection?

September 3, 2015 / 5 Comments

(NOTE: This was originally written in my PhD journal but I’ve decided to post it here as I’d welcome thoughts and general feedback on the idea of developing a ‘sociology of prospection’) Increasingly I use the term prospection in my research and work. Psychologists use this term to refer to “our ability to ‘pre-experience’ the … [Read more…]

Posted in: Futures practices, PhD research Tagged: PhD research, prospective practices, sociology

Studying prospective practices at Australia’s national science organisation (PhD update)

August 28, 2015 / Leave a Comment

The past two weeks have been eventful ones for my doctoral research. As a result, the eventual thesis  (one day I’ll get there…) will now be a single “nested” case study which examines the use of techniques and practices of prospection by the Energy Flagship within CSIRO, Australia’s national science organisation, with a focus on … [Read more…]

Posted in: Anticipatory action, Futures practices, PhD research Tagged: CSIRO, PhD research

Learning to think sociologically

August 6, 2015 / 1 Comment

Economic sociology examines the effect of the social on economic behaviour. The introduction by Frank Dobbin (Professor of Sociology at Harvard University) to book The New Economic Sociology provides an interesting overview of sociological insights into economic behaviour (see here, here). It’s a really good starting point if you’re seeking to more deeply examine economic … [Read more…]

Posted in: PhD research Tagged: PhD research, sociology

Revisiting theory and practice in futures studies

July 26, 2015 / 2 Comments

The question of whether futures studies is sufficiently theorised was raised in an exchange between Sirkka Heinonen (Finland Futures Research Centre) and Sohail Inayatullah. Heinonen states that “currently in futures research there are a lot of futures methods and foresight tools available but not so many theories” and asks “what do you think should be … [Read more…]

Posted in: Futures practices, PhD research Tagged: futures research, futures thinking, PhD research

The management of expectations, ‘temporal work’, and the functions of fictional expectations in structuring action in the present

July 14, 2015 / Leave a Comment

Recently I’ve been reading some papers in which sociologists take the uncertainty and indeterminacy of decision situations (such as most decision situations in economic contexts) as a key starting point for their analysis and theory-building. For example, because of the fundamental uncertainty that characterises many decisions in economic contexts Jens Beckert argues that the decision-making … [Read more…]

Posted in: Anticipatory action, PhD research, Sustainability issues Tagged: Expectations, PhD research, uncertainty

What should researchers do when information doesn’t matter?

April 18, 2015 / 3 Comments

This is a question I’ve been pondering over the past few days. Lots of social science research has found that in situations when uncertainty in high such as where decision-makers are grappling with lots of “unknown unknowns”, and there isn’t a values consensus (e.g. there isn’t agreement on ends and means), that information doesn’t matter. … [Read more…]

Posted in: Futures practices, PhD research, Sustainability issues Tagged: Linear model, PhD research, Roger Pielke Jr, Science-policy interface

Allenby and Sarewitz on key principles for ‘muddling forward’ intelligently

April 14, 2015 / Leave a Comment

What does it mean to muddle forward and to do so intelligently? This post is another that draws on and responds to Allenby and Sarewitz’s excellent book The Techno-Human Condition. In it I consider a central idea that they advance that, when we face a wicked problem or are grappling with a situation of “wicked … [Read more…]

Posted in: PhD research, Sustainability science Tagged: PhD research, sustainability science

Traditions of sustainability research and practice

April 5, 2015 / Leave a Comment

When I first started considering the sustainability literature I engaged with commonly discussed frameworks like so-called ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ sustainability – the former commonly described as being technocentric and anthropocentric, whereas the latter is more ecocentric, communalist and preservationist – and environmental discourse frameworks. Such discourse frameworks include John Dryzek’s model of four ecodiscourses (the … [Read more…]

Posted in: PhD research, Sustainability issues, Sustainability science Tagged: PhD research, Sustainability
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