Profile

Kersty Hobson joined the Environmental Change Institute in August 2010, as Senior Research Fellow into the Social and Cultural Contexts of Environmental Change. She has qualifications in Anthropology (BA(Hons) from Durham University and MPhil from Cambridge) and Human Geography (DPhil from University College London), and has held research and teaching posts at the Australian National University and the University of Birmingham.

Her work to date has explored various aspects of the human dimensions of environmental change. Her doctoral work examined domestic sustainable consumption in the UK using qualitative methodologies: work she later extended into an Australian context. She has also researched and published on environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Singapore; the nexus between NGOs and animal geographies in Hong Kong; environmental governance and deliberation; and food geographies.

Her most recent work was part of an Australian Research Council project into social responses to climate change in the Australian Capital Region (ACR). This multi-disciplinary project put together detailed climate change scenarios for the ACR up to 2100: scenarios that were then utilised in face-to-face interviews with members of the public, as well as a 4-day deliberative forum into climate change in the ACR. This project is currently in its analysis stage, and publications will be forthcoming within the next year.

Selected Publications

• Hobson, K., Niemeyer, S., (2011) Public responses to climate change: The role of deliberation in building capacity for adaptive action. Global Environmental Change, doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.05.001
• Hobson, K., Niemeyer, S., (2011) ‘What sceptics believe’: the effects of information and deliberation on climate skepticism. Manuscript submitted to Public Understanding of Science: currently under review.
• Hobson, K (2011) Environmental Politics, Green Governmentality and the possibility of a 'Creative Grammar' for Domestic Sustainable Consumption'. In R. Lane and A. Gorman-Murray (Eds.) Material Geographies of Household Sustainability. Farnham: Ashgate.
• Hobson, K. and Hill, A. (2010) Cultivating citizen-subjects through collective praxis: organized gardening projects in Australia and the Philippines. In, Lewis, T. and E. Potter (eds.) Ethical Consumption: a critical introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. 284 pp. ISBN: 978-0-415-55825-9.
• Hobson, K. (2009) On a governmentality analytics of the 'deliberative turn': material conditions, rationalities and the deliberating subject. Space and Polity, 13(3): 175-191.
• Hobson, K. (2009) On the modern and nonmodern in deliberative environmental democracy. Global Environmental Politics, 9(4): 64-80.
• Hobson, K. (2008) Reasons to be cheerful: thinking (sustainably) in a climate changing world. Geography Compass, 2(1): 199-214.
• Hobson, K. (2007) Political animals? On animals as subjects in an enlarged political geography. Political Geography, 26(3): 250-267.
• Hobson, K. (2006) Bins, bulbs and shower timers: on the 'techno-ethics' of sustainable living. Ethics, Place and Environment, 9(3): 335-354.
• Hobson, K. (2006) Enacting environmental justice in Singapore: performative justice and the Green Volunteer Network. Geoforum, 37(5): 671-681.
• Niemeyer, S., Petts, J., and Hobson, K. (2005) Rapid climate change and society; assessing responses and thresholds. Risk Analysis, 25(6): 1443-1456.
• Hobson, K. (2003) Thinking habits into action: the role of knowledge and process in questioning household consumption practices. Local Environment, 8(1): 95-112.
• Hobson, K. (2002) Competing discourses of sustainable consumption: does the 'rationalisation of lifestyles' make sense? Environmental Politics, 11(2): 95-120. Reprinted in, Jackson, T. (ed.) (2006) The Earthscan Reader in Sustainable Consumption. Earthscan, London.
• Hobson, K. (2001) Sustainable lifestyles: rethinking barriers and behaviour change. In, Cohen, M.J. and J. Murphy (eds.) Exploring Sustainable Consumption: Environmental Policy and the Social Sciences. Oxford; Pergamon. pp. 191-209.