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Andrew Dobson (April 15, 1957) is a British political author and Professor at Keele University, specialising in environmental politics. Dobson has a BA in Politics from the University of Reading and D.Phil in Politics from the University of Oxford. His best-known work is entitled Green Political Thought, in which he argues that 'ecologism' is a political ideology in its own right. His most recent monograph is Citizenship and the Environment (Oxford University Press, 2005), and he co-edited two other books on environmental/ecological citizenship in 2005. In 2006 he co-edited Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge (Cambridge University Press) with Robyn Eckersley. He ran as a Green Party candidate in the 2005 UK general election, but was not elected. He also ran in the local elections in 2006, contesting the Keele ward, and came within a handful of votes of unseating the leader of the Liberal Democrats. He was made an Academician in the Academy of Social Sciences in February 2008. He was a founding editor of the international journal Environmental Politics, now in its 18th year. He serves as an academic member of the DEFRA advisory body, the Sustainable Development Research Network (SDRN), and is an advisor to the Government's Sustainable Development Commission.

 

Jenny Pickerill is a lecturer in Human Geography at Leicester University, UK. She has previously been a postdoctoral fellow in Internet Studies at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia. She gained her PhD in Geography (Newcastle University, 2001) exploring environmental activists use of the internet and an MSc in Geographical Information Systems (Edinburgh University, 1996). She has published a book - Cyberprotest - and over a dozen articles on internet activism, specifically its use by environmental and social justice activists in Britain and Australia. She is currently exploring anti-war activism in Britain on an ESRC-funded project (with Frank Webster and Kevin Gillan, City University), and anti-capitalist activism and everyday life on another ESRC project (with Paul Chatterton and Stuart Hodkinson, Leeds University). Dr Pickerill has a particular interest in internet activism. She is currently working on a research project on Internet Activism: Anti-war movements in the Information Age. The project aims to characterise and account for the distinguishing features of anti-war movements in Britain while showing particular concern for their use and adoption of new media/ICTs. It examines processes of informal political participation in often transitory and heterogeneous mobilisation round contentious issues. Of which the anti-war movements are a major – if understudied – instance. Using recent coalitions mobilised against wars, four foci are explored: representation, organisation, mobilisation and coalition building. Representation concerns how social movements present themselves internally and externally; organisation involves questions of management of affairs; mobilisation is about the conditions of activity amongst the social movements; and coalition building is about how alliances are created and maintained.

 

Dr Chukwumerije Okereke is Reader in Environment & Development at the University of Reading. He was a Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Climate and Development centre at the Smith School. He is a renowned policy analysis and development specialist. His main interest is the governance of climate change and the links with international development. He has been engaged in teaching, research and consultancy activities focusing on climate governance, climate adaptation and low carbon development in developing countries for over 15 years.

Current research activities include: (i) the governance of low carbon development in Africa; (ii) global environmental justice and international development; and (iii) the links between government policy and corporate climate change strategies. Dr Okereke has worked and published extensively on climate governance and international development with special focus on policy design, ethical dimensions of institutions of governance and the role of private sector in climate governance. He was the Project Manager of the Rwandan National Strategy for Climate and Low Carbon Development project funded jointly by the Climate Development and Knowledge Network (CDKN) and DfID Rwanda. He has also been the Project Director of many other climate change and adaptation projects including Climate Change Impact on Health and Response Options for the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Dr Okereke is the Moderator of United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Climate Diplomacy Course and an ad-hoc consultant to UNDP and the World Bank. He is the author of several literature and research papers on national and global environmental policy-making including Global Justice and Neoliberal Environmental Governance (Routledge 2008) and The Politics of the Environment (ed.) (Routledge 2007).

 

John Vogler is Professor of International Relations at Keele University. He is also Convenor of the British International Studies Association Environment Working Group and a member of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP). The main focus of his research is on international environmental regimes; governance of the global commons and external relations of the European Union.

 

Prof Andrew Jordan has a longstanding interest in EU and British environmental politics and policy making. He has conducted work on the long-term impact of the European Union on the traditional style, structures and procedures of British environmental policy (aka ‘Europeanization’), as well as sustainable development, environmental policy integration and new modes of governance. Prof Jordan has also undertake comparative policy analysis in the EU on a broad range of themes including climate change, policy appraisal, policy innovation and policy dismantling. He has been an editor of the international journal Environment and Planning C (Government and Policy) since 1998. Prof Jordan published over a hundred peer reviewed papers and chapters in edited books, as well as authored or edited 10 books on these themes. In the past, he has had leadership roles in many large EU funded projects including MATISSE, ADAM and EPIGOV (all Framework 6) and CONSENSUS, RESPONSES and LIAISE (Framework 7). Prof Jordan also undertaken work inter alia for the Cabinet Office, the UK environment ministry, the Countryside Agency, the UK Foresight, the European Commission and the Dutch Environment Ministry. He is currently completing books on Dismantling Public Policy (Oxford University Press, 2012) and a third edition of EU Environmental Policy (Earthscan, 2012, with Camilla Adelle). In 2010 Prof Jordan was awarded a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust to undertake work on policy innovation in multi-levelled systems of governance. In 2008 He was elected as an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS).

 

Chris Bailey is Professor of American Politics in the School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy (SPIRE). He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, where he obtained a B.A. in P.P.E. in 1982 and a D. Phil in American Politics in 1986. He was selected by the American Political Science Association to be a Congressional Fellow for 1989-90 and has served as Chair of the American Politics Group of the Political Studies Association. He has published widely on American politics and is a co-editor of the Developments in American Politics series. His current research focuses on social regulation in the United States. This research has two interconnecting elements. The first is a study of the politics of smoking. He is currently writing a book on smoking politics and policy in the United States. The second is a study of morality politics. He has written several essays on values and identity. Future plans include a study of “Lifestyle Politics” in the United States. This will examine government efforts to regulate lifestyle choices involving sex and health.

 

Paul Lucardie is Professor of Politics at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. On January 1th 2013 the Montesquieu Institute has welcomed Dr. Paul Lucardie as a fellow. Until his retirement on September 1th 2011 he was a researcher at the Documentation Centre for Dutch Political Parties (DNPP) in Groningen, one of the partners in the MI. Even after September 2011 he will remain as a volunteer at the DNPP connected.

 

Marcel Wissenburg teaches and/or co-ordinates several courses in political theory and philosophy. He is Chair of the department's Board of Examiners supervising the quality of teaching, and chair of the faculty's Advisory Committee on Research and Research Policy. After a five-year term as honorary Socrates professor of Humanist Philosophy at Wageningen University (2004-2009), he became a Visiting Professor at Keele University in 2009. He is a member of the Board of the Dutch Political Science Association, and was Chair of the jury of the Jaarprijs Politicologie (annual award for the best Dutch Ph.D. thesis), co-founder and jury member of the ECPR Dick Richardson Prize, and probably other things as well, if only he could remember. His research interests cover liberalism, theories of social justice and the interface of political and environmental philosophy. He has just concluded work on a five-year research plan on 'personal and political autonomy', that is (take a deep breath): research on the normative assessment of the effects that the evolution and re-shaping of political frameworks like the sovereign nation-state (into a confusingly complex interconnected network of institutions from the local to the global) has on the potential for autonomy of individuals and the potential for self-rule of collectives.

 

Hayley Stevenson graduated from Flinders University of South Australia with First Class Honours in International Relations and Spanish. She was awarded her PhD from the University of Adelaide, Australia, in 2009. Her doctoral research was an analysis of the diffusion of international climate governance norms, and included case studies on Australia, India, and Spain. This analysis revealed a paradox in global climate governance: successful global action to avoid climate change depends on states complying with international agreements, but the present system induces states to comply with global norms in ways that actually exacerbate unsustainable development. In 2012, this research will be published in a book titled ‘Institutionalizing Unsustainability: The Paradox of Global Climate Governance’ (University of California Press). After completing her doctorate, she spent three years at the Australian National University as a postdoctoral fellow. At the ANU, Dr Stevenson worked with Professor John S. Dryzek on a project entitled ‘Deliberative Global Governance of Climate Change’. The project addresses the concern that global climate change itself, as well as the institutions and policies designed to address climate change, will affect people’s lives around the world, although unevenly. It is therefore important that affected people are appropriately represented in decision-making processes, and that institutions are responsive to their needs and concerns. Dr Stevenson and Professor Dryzek are now co-authoring a book based on this research. In January 2012, Dr Stevenson joined the Politics Department at Sheffield as a Lecturer in International Relations and Security. Hayley Stevenson’s principal research interests include: global environmental politics and climate change, constructivist theory of International Relations, norms and foreign policy, global civil society, and deliberation in global governance.

 

 

Jonathon Porritt, Co-Founder of Forum for the Future, is an eminent writer, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development.  Established in 1996, Forum for the Future is now the UK’s leading sustainable development charity, with 70 staff and over 100 partner organisations including some of the world’s leading companies. In addition, he is Co-Director of The Prince of Wales's Business and Sustainability Programme which runs Seminars for senior executives around the world.  He is a Non-Executive Director of Wessex Water, and of Willmott Dixon Holdings.  He is a Trustee of the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, and is involved in the work of many NGOs and charities as Patron, Chair or Special Adviser. He was formerly Director of Friends of the Earth (1984-90); co-chair of the Green Party (1980-83) of which he is still a member; chairman of UNED-UK (1993-96); chairman of Sustainability South West, the South West Round Table for Sustainable Development (1999-2001); a Trustee of WWF UK (1991-05), a member of the Board of the South West Regional Development Agency (1999-08). He stood down as Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission in July 2009 after nine years providing high-level advice to Government Ministers. Jonathon received a CBE in January 2000 for services to environmental protection.

 

Convenor

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Sherilyn MacGregor

School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy (SPIRE)
Keele University

Sherilyn MacGregor is Senior Lecturer in Politics and a member of the Research Centre for the Study of Politics, International Relations and Environment (RC4SPIRE). She is co-director of an interdisciplinary BSc programme on environment and sustainability and teaches a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules on environmental politics. The focus of her research is the relationship between feminist and environmental politics, particularly around issues of activism, citizenship and unpaid labour.  She is author of Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and the Politics of Care (UBC Press, 2006). Recent publications include articles on the post-political and gendered discourses of climate change (Sociological Review 2009; Hypatia  2013) and on the trajectories of green and feminist political thought (Contemporary Political Theory 2009). She is has recently finished co-editing Environmental Movements around the World with Timothy Doyle, is Joint Editor of Environmental Politics journal and a past Editorial Advisor to Women and Environments International.

She convened the Keele ECPR Summer School in 2008 and 2010