As environmental social scientists in the School, we teach and research on the social causes, consequences and policy implications of environmental problems, within the over arching framework of sustainable development. We do so from a wide range of social science disciplines including human geography, sociology, organisational science, economics, politics, psychology, epidemiology, and development studies. We operate at the cutting edge of methodological development in areas such as GIS, environmental appraisal, landscape visualisation, participatory deliberative processes and economic valuation and risk analysis.

Recent and current projects include:

• ChREAM, which examines the impact of the European Commission Water Framework Directive on land use patterns and farm incomes.

• A multi-university study to develop the Ecosystem Services approach to natural resource management. This is an interdisciplinary framework, including both analysis and supporting methods and techniques, in which functioning of natural systems - such as wetlands - and their outcomes are valued in terms of goods and services provided to society.

• The Programme on Environmental Decision Making, which examines the policy challenges of a transition to multi-level environmental governance, has produced new frameworks for understanding social and ecological resilience, and has combined economic techniques with GIS visualisation to address fundamental questions about how individuals formulate and express preferences.

Much of our work is undertaken in internationally recognised research centres such as CSERGE, Tyndall, InteREAM and CER. A great deal is externally funded inter alia by the ESRC, NERC, EPSRC, the Leverhulme Trust and the European Commission, as well as numerous private funders and charities. The results of our research are internationally renowned and often fed directly into the policy process or disseminated to a wider range of research users as part of the School’s wider Knowledge Transfer activities.

Individual members of faculty contribute to editing major international journals such as J. Risk Research, International Journal of Community Currency Research, Local Economy, Environment and Planning A and C, Global Environmental Change, Environmental Politics, Social Science and Medicine, Climate Policy, Environment and History, Journal of Cultural Heritage, Environmental Impact Assessment Review, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, Environmental Values, Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, and Environmental and Resource Economics.

We have a large and active body of graduate students who also work at the interface of the physical and social sciences. We always welcome applications from those wishing to join us, either as research students (MScR or PhD) or on one of our taught Masters courses.