Research Grants: Environment, Landscape and Society

Dr Federico Caprotti

• Evaluating the role of industry bodies
  Nuffield Foundation: 2009-2010: £7,532
  The project aims to analyse the processes behind decisions to fund and develop environmental technologies in the cleantech sector in the UK, USA and China. It is based on a comparative study of San Francisco, London and Shanghai, and seeks to understand the role of industry bodies and the media as mediators in discourse-based decision-making.
  The research assesses the role of, i). the production and flows of information and environmental discourses among industry bodies and media companies; ii) the discursive feedbacks which inform this process among project companies. These companies are both sources in the discourses mediated by industry bodies and media firms, and recipients of their results, which may take the form of funding for wind power projects and technologies.

Dr Gail Davies

• Biogeography and Transgenic Life
  ESRC Research Fellowship: 2007-2010: £279,517
  Since the development of transgenic mice in the 1980s, genetically altered model organisms have come to play a key role in research and development in the biosciences. Yet the increasingly global scope and reach of these organisms, for example in the development of international mutant mouse resources, raises challenges for policy makers, scientists and regulators.
• How, and at what level, are the production and circulation of genetically altered animals to be standardized and regulated?
• What contribution do economic, cultural, ethical and biomedical criteria make to the development of regulation in different contexts?
• How might these be articulated or adjudicated internationally?
• And how do these relate to existing national and regional differences in the ‘geographies of science’, through diverse approaches to animal welfare, public engagement and political commitment to biotechnological development?
  
  The Fellowship is funded to explore how these model organisms emerge as key actors in the economic, political and cultural practices shaping global developments in biotechnology.
• Locating Technoscience: The Geographies of Science, Technology and Politics
  ESRC seminar series: 2005-07:
  Concerns about the geographies of science and technology feature prominently in the activities of government, industry and civil society at many scales. Questions relate to the development and implications of a global knowledge economy, the spatial contexts to technological innovation and regulation, and the changing boundaries between public and private scientific enterprise. This two-year ESRC interdisciplinary seminar series brought together new and established researchers working from Geography and STS perspectives with practitioners interested in the geographies of science, to develop new perspectives on the role of space in the practices of technoscience. Five seminars in 2006-7 were attended by over 200 people from institutions in the UK, USA and Europe. One outcome was an on-line Reader to include a series of articles on the geographies of contemporary science and technology.
  http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/locating-technoscience/reader/
  http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/locating-technoscience/archive.htm

Dr Peter Jones

• MESMA: Monitoring and evaluation of spatially managed marine areas
  European Union FP 7: 2009-2012: Є665,991
  This project, under a total grant of Є6,568,846, is led by the Institute for Marine Resources & Ecosystem Studies (IMARES), The Netherlands, and involves 18 research organisations from 12 EU and related countries. It will play a key role in the development and implementation of European policies on marine ecosystem-based management, particularly through marine spatial planning initiatives, under the Marine Strategy Directive, and marine protected areas under the Habitats Directive. It will also make contributions to relevant theories/literatures on implementing the ecosystem-based approach to managing our seas. Dr Jones is leading the overarching work programme on governance issues, analysing different approaches to implementing marine spatial planning, including through marine protected areas. The project will also inform the development and implementation of UK marine spatial planning (MSP), being promoted through the Marine Act.
  http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfwpej/icem.htm