Research

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Emily Boyd & Chuks Okereke contribute chapters to award-winning book

Professor Emily Boyd and Dr Chuks Okereke have contributed chapters to a new book, ‘Successful Adaption to Climate Change – Linking Science and Policy in a Rapidly Changing World’ which has been awarded ‘Outstanding Academic Title of 2014’ by Choice Review.
The Award
Choice Review: Outstanding Academic Title of 2014 Successful Adaptation to Climate Change Linking Science and Policy in a Rapidly Changing World, Routledge edited by Susanne C. Moser and Maxwell T Boykoff.  The Choice Review identifies the best scholarly titles and abstracts, in 2014 featuring 690 titles in 54 disciplines and subsections. Emily Boyd is lead author on Chapter 12 ‘Building Climate Resilience: Lessons of Early Warning in Africa’. Chuks Okereke is co-author on Chapter 5 ‘REDD+ and Social Justice: Adaptation by Way of Mitigation?’
The Book
The book Successful Adaptation is described as follows: “This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume, with surprising insights. Of the many books on climate change, this one really hits on the essentials of “What are we going to do about it?” and “Why haven’t we done anything yet?” It focuses primarily on issues in the social science arena, addressing adaption to climate change and how societies and policy makers are wrestling with what to do about ecological issues, but also the societal hurdles and reasons why, for the foreseeable future, not much is probably going to happen. The compendium of articles covers such topics as social justice and adaption, trade-offs in maintaining (or not maintaining) biodiversity, media representations of climate adaptation, risk reduction, baseline assessment, and what some societies and countries are already doing to adapt to a changing climate. This work will make readers think and realize that although addressing climate change is complicated, achieving workable solutions is even more complicated. Well-written and engaging reading for both social and physical scientists working on or interested in climate change or associated issues. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals/practitioners; general audiences. –B. Ransom, formerly, University of California, San Diego
 
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SAGES hosts Early Career Researcher Conference

Last week 18 Early Career Researchers (ECRs, PhD and Post-Doc) from both FFIR programmes (FRANC and SINATRA) met for the first ECR meeting hosted by the School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading (20th & 21st January, 2015).

Each ECR gave an 8 minute presentation on their work and how they might interact with other members of the programme. This was the first opportunity for ECRs from both projects to present to one another, and as a result a number of potential collaborations and interactions were discovered. The presentations showcased a number of new datasets being created, either catchment specific data, rainfall data or emergency response/human loss data. This highlighted a number of potential users within the programme, and hence a number of interactions between ECR. The presentations also showed the diverse range of activities being undertaken to answer the problem of Flooding From Intense Rainfall.

On the second day there were breakout sessions to discuss potential further interactions and collaborations, with a strong emphasis on sustaining the collaboration between ECRs. A number of potential joint publications were discussed as well as ideas for the next ECR meeting, forums and progress updates to keep the ECR community working together.

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REF 2014 results confirm Reading Environmental Science as amongst the very best

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) published the results of its Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 on 18 December 2014. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the method for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions (HEIs) held approximately every six years.

Reading ranked 3rd of 45 submissions in Earth System & Environmental Sciences (UoA7) in terms of ‘research power’, placing Reading higher than Southampton, UEA, Cambridge, Lancaster, Oxford and UCL. The submission comprised staff primarily from Meteorology plus 15 staff from Geography & Environmental Science (two-thirds of our department).

Click here for further details from Meteorology.

Expert peer review has confirmed 79% of the research outputs as scoring in the world-leading and internationally excellent categories. In addition, scores well above the sector means were achieved for research impact (51% at 4*) and research environment (60% at 4*). All impact case studies were ranked as world-leading or internationally excellent.

One-third of our department was submitted in Geography (UoA17b). Based on research power, Reading Geography ranked close to the mid-point of 74 submissions. 47% of research outputs were graded as internationally excellent and 10% world-leading.

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PhD Student selected to attend the Tuscany Quality of Life Global Laboratory

Lorna Zischka, a HERG PhD student, has been selected to attend the Tuscany Quality of Life Global Laboratory in February 2015. Only 15 early career researchers from across the world were selected to attend this event.

http://www.pololionellobonfanti.it/tuscany-quality-of-life/

Lorna is supervised by Marina Della Giusta (Economics) and Steve Musson (GES). Her PhD  focuses on the relationships between charitable giving and social cohesion and makes use of experimental micro data, international large survey data and case studies including South Reading.

Lorna said, “My work focuses on evaluating community relationships by the time and money that people invest into them. The more ‘giving’ our society, the better our joint quality of life. I’m delighted to be offered this opportunity to discuss these things at the Tuscany network and to learn from others researching this topic.”

Congratulations, Lorna!