Projects

This humanities and social science project aims to revolutionize Just Transitions practice and discourse by giving voice to those on the frontlines of the climate crisis, energy poverty, and renewable energy industrialization–Indigenous people. By examining “energy epistemologies” or how Indigenous people know and value energy and its relationships to justice, this project promotes a more inclusive and pluralist conception of Just Transition. Working with Indigenous communities, we will document energy epistemologies with the Diné, or the Navajo of the Southwest of Native North America, the Eastern Kuku Yalanji, in north Queensland, Australia, and the Mincéirs or Travellers of North Ireland. Collaborating with Indigenous scholars, communities, and renewable energy developers, this project will;

1. link energy epistemologies to notions of energy justice
2. influence policies by advancing Indigenous energy justice in policy debates, and in the process
3. contribute to the theory and practice of Indigenous energy justice and Just Transition

The IPCC is currently in its seventh assessment cycle which formally began in July 2023. At its inaugural Plenary Session for the cycle (IPCC-60), held in Istanbul in January 2024, the Panel decided on to produce the Seventh Assessment Report which comprises three Working Group contributions. The Working Group II contribution deals with impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. The Report will evaluate:

• Impacts, losses and damages on, and vulnerability and risk for natural (g. land, freshwater, biodiversity and oceans), human (e.g. human safety, mobility and migration, health, economic sectors, poverty, livelihoods, and cultural heritage), and managed human-natural systems with implications for climate resilient development.
• Evaluating climate change adaptation: Methods for monitoring, setting indicators, metrics and targets, measuring observed and projected policy effectiveness at multiple temporal and spatial scales.
• Scenarios and assessments of integrated adaptation, mitigation and development policies at multiple governance levels (local to multi-national) accounting for gender, equity, justice and/or Indigenous Knowledge, and local knowledges.
• Aggregation of information on impacts, vulnerability, adaptation and risks to settlements (rural, urban, cities, small islands), and infrastructure and systems (g. sanitation and hygiene, water, food, nutrition, economic and energy security, industry, health and well-being, mobility).
• Adaptation needs, options, opportunities, constraints, limits, enabling conditions, policy impacts and influencing factors including contributions from governance, finance, law, psychology and sociology.
• Global dimension of adaptation responses: financial incentivization, responding to losses and damages, equity, justice, finance and governance, etc.
• Socio-cultural, psychological, political and legal drivers of making and implementing decisions.

Fact-checking, as a distinct journalistic form, has risen to prominence in the 21st century as a response to concerns about a lack of respect for the truth in political debate and the rapid spread of misinformation across social media platforms. This project uses expertise and insights from the social sciences and philosophy to examine fact-checking epistemologies.

In the context of political polarisation, challenges to the authority of expertise, concerns about dishonesty in political debate, and the spread of misinformation online, the epistemologies of fact-checkers and how they are perceived by public audiences are topics of great importance. This research will generate novel and impactful knowledge about how fact-checkers produce and justify fact-checks, how automation could change this, and how UK and US public audiences and key stakeholders view different epistemic approaches to fact-checking.

Dr Laurence Williams, Associate Research Fellow at the Bennett Institute, is the Principal Investigator of this project, which is funded by The British Academy.

Tackling the climate emergency means rapidly decarbonising our production and consumption systems, particularly in the increasingly interconnected energy and mobility systems. 

But how should governments navigate their way between competing climate policy interests and industrial policy concerns, while accelerating sustainability transitions?  

Answering this question calls for a re-examination of effective policy mixes for delivering rapid decarbonization and green competitiveness, and a consideration of the politics and policies of green transition processes. 

The EMPOCI project has three main aims: 

• To provide new understandings of the global interplay between multi-level policy mixes and low-carbon innovations in socio-technical transitions 
• To develop and test new methodological tools enabling both deep and broad insights into the drivers and barriers in transition processes towards sustainability 
• To co-design practical strategies for accelerating sustainable energy-mobility transitions, supporting the Paris Agreement in combating climate change. 

EMPOCI is funded by the European Research Council (grant agreement no. 85273) and started in June 2020. The project will run until October 2026.

Industrial clusters across the UK are an essential part of the economy – but they also make a significant contribution to UK emissions. Decarbonising the largest clusters is an important step towards reaching the UK’s net zero emissions targets.

IDRIC developed innovative, cost-effective and multidisciplinary decarbonisation solutions at pace and scale, by harnessing the power of collaboration. Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), its goal was to deliver long-lasting economic growth and societal benefits, and to build the foundations for the new industrial clusters of tomorrow.

Professor Benjamin Sovacool, the Director of the Bennett Institute, was a Co-Director of IDRIC.

ACCESS worked to share understanding of how people, societies and systems needed to change and adapt to create a healthier environment and meet net zero goals.

Its four areas of work included: learning from the past experiences of social scientists to catalyse change; empowering environmental social scientists through training; innovating with new approaches that enable social scientists to play leading roles in addressing environmental challenges; and coordinating environmental social scientists’ knowledge sharing across the UK and worldwide. It was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Professor Benjamin Sovacool, the Director of the Bennett Institute, was a Co-Director of Innovation and Research Impact for ACCESS