Inaugural Lecture of Professor Rosie Day

Pursuing Justice: Interdisciplinary Adventures in Energy and Environment

Why should we think about justice in relation to environmental and energy matters? What do we mean by justice anyway? And what is a social scientist doing in these areas that are more usually understood as the domain of natural scientists and engineers? Giving an overview of her personal journey and career to date, Rosie’s lecture will address these questions, and explain how she has developed her thinking through cross-disciplinary collaborations and projects involving among others, London suburbanites, livestock farmers in Limpopo, older people in the Rhondda valley, and Birmingham’s rivers. Along the way she will reflect on how justice involves addressing knowledge -based power relations between different communities, epistemologies and disciplines.

Biographical note

Rosie Day is an environmental and energy social scientist and human geographer. Her work has covered the nexus of air quality, energy and water, but she is perhaps best known for her work on energy poverty and just energy transitions, especially work that develops new applications of justice-based theoretical frameworks. Sitting at disciplinary crossroads, she has had a leading role in a number of projects funded by the ESRC, EPSRC, AHRC, NERC, the European Commission, and charities. Over several years she has supervised a group of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in GEES with work addressing environmental and energy problematics internationally, with the aim of improving people’s wellbeing, access to resources and quality of life, as well as the health of the planet.