I am a researcher intrigued by questions of how society changes and what that means for addressing the urgent challenges of climate change. My work focuses on energy demand, how it is governed, and how it changes in relation to our everyday lives and work. I am a Research Fellow at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change at the University of Manchester and a Visiting Researcher at Lancaster University.

In my current research, I am working with the policymaking community in the UK to better understand how energy demand is addressed, prioritised within and may otherwise affect energy and climate strategies. Energy demand is part of a whole systems approach to energy transition and decarbonisation: whether it reduces or increases and whether peaks in demand can be managed are important questions for the success of climate goals. But demand is not usually well monitored or directly addressed within policy. My work explores why.

I am particularly interested in the framings around ‘sufficiency’ which are widely discussed in many European settings, but not in the UK. Much of my work also concerns heating and cooling, thermal comfort and even clothing in relation to energy use. In the past, I have also researched digital technologies and platforms and their implications for energy demand.

Overall, I work with sociological theory and political science, and draw particularly on the evolving field of practice theory and its development in policy studies. My work contributes to debates in energy research, the sociology of consumption, sustainable computing and (on occasion) practice theory itself.