Profile

I am a Tyndall Research Fellow researching the development of international action on climate change post-2012. Prior to joining the team at Oxford I was an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography at Durham University (2005-2007). My PhD from Cambridge University (2001-2005) examined the governance of socio-technical systems in the context of climate change, focusing on UK low energy housing. Prior to that I worked as an environmental consultant on water and wastewater policy at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney. I completed a Masters in Environmental Change and Management at the University of Oxford in 1997-98.

Research Interests

My research interests centre on policy change and technology innovation in response to climate change, intersecting existing bodies of work on environmental policy and science and technology studies. I have a growing interest in the question of how the problem of climate change might destabilise existing socio-technical systems, such as energy and water. My doctoral research concentrated on the role of pioneering UK low energy housing developments in facilitating widespread change in the housing sector. A key contribution of the research has been in developing new interdisciplinary conceptual frameworks to help understand how networks of humans and non-humans influence climate change policy and practice. Existing political science approaches to governance, focused largely on formal policy making and nation states, have tended to overlook the importance of material infrastructures in encouraging or impeding policy change. In turn, theoretical studies in science and technology concerning governance have generally downplayed the complex politics of technology change.

As a Tyndall Research Fellow at Oxford I join a team examining international climate change policy after the Kyoto Protocol, post-2012. The project is about the role of non-state actors and key developing countries in reducing carbon emissions, in particular looking at how these actors interact with, and influence, international policy. I am concentrating on assessing the role of carbon offset organisations, such as voluntary offset retailers, carbon traders and project developers. With an interdisciplinary background in science and technology studies and political science I will be developing new ideas about how to conceptualise carbon offset technologies and carbon markets.

Selected Publications

• Lovell, HC (forthcoming October 2007) Exploring the role of materials in policy change: innovation in low energy housing in the UK. Environment and Planning A.
• Lovell, HC (2007) The governance of innovation in socio-technical systems: the difficulties of strategic niche management in practice. Science and Public Policy, Vol. 34: 35-44.
• Lovell, HC (2005) Supply and demand for low energy housing in the UK: insights from a science and technology studies approach. Housing Studies, 20:815-829.
• Lovell, HC (2005) Low energy housing in the UK. Policy briefing paper. ESRC and Durham University: Durham, UK.
• Lovell, HC (2004) Framing sustainable housing as a solution to climate change. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 6:35-55.
• Lovell, HC (2003) Modern Methods of House Building, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology ‘POSTnote’, December 2003, number 209.