A new series of publications aims to spark debate in environmental social science by bringing fresh thinking and cutting-edge research to a public audience.

The 3S Research Group brings together 33 academics in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, and was established in 2011. Its work focuses on critical social science approaches to researching the social and political dimensions of environment and sustainability issues.

Launched in 2012, the 3S (Science, Society and Sustainability) Working Paper series has published 17 papers to date by faculty, researchers and PhD students in the group. Topics covered include community energy; science, climate change and democracy; technologies of participation; understanding energy use in the home; alternative economic geographies; grassroots innovations; and issues of politics in science policy.

Dr Gill Seyfang (co-editor of the series) explained the importance of the series: “working papers allow us to get our high-impact research findings into the public domain quickly and effectively, sometimes as much as a year or two ahead of publication in an academic journal”. 

3S working papers are indexed by Google Scholar and regularly appear in searches for publications on the latest topics by 3S members.

Working papers production manager Rachel Macrorie commented “as a PhD student in the School, it’s incredibly useful for me to be able to publish my work like this and get immediate feedback from fellow researchers, and it helps to build confidence for writing journal papers too”.

The research group hopes its publication series will help to raise its international profile and establish 3S as a vibrant source of world-leading research.

http://www.3s.uea.ac.uk