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Caitlin Hafferty is a researcher in environmental social science at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, specialising in environmental governance at the interface of science, policy, and practice. She is Co-Lead of an Agile Initiative ‘Sprint’ on place-based governance, a researcher at the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recover, and an alumni Fellow of the Oxford Policy Engagement Network (OPEN). In 2025, she was seconded to the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) as a Policy Advisor. Her work primarily focuses on England, Wales, and Scotland.

Caitlin’s research experiments with different ways of doing impactful inter- and transdisciplinary social science, challenging the notion that ‘rigorous research’ and ‘real-world impact’ are separate domains, but instead constantly shaping one another through the continuous co-production of knowledge. She works in close collaboration with government, business, financiers, NGOs, farmers, landowners, and farmers/community initiatives, and is passionate about empowering early career researchers, policymakers, and practitioners alike to pursue collaborative and boundary-spanning approaches.

Research

  • Environmental governance – participatory, collaborative, and place-based approaches to decision-making, and how governance structures shape transformative change towards multiple sustainability goals.
  • Knowledge, power, and agency at the science-policy interface – how evidence is generated, mobilised, and actively contested, and how environmental organisations learn, adapt, and build capacity.
  • Risk, uncertainty, and complexity – how these dynamics shape policy, finance, community agency, and organisational learning in relation to environmental governance, especially nature recovery and nature-based solutions.

She has collaborated  with a range of policy and practice organisations across England, Wales, and Scotland including DESNZ, Defra, Natural England, Natural Resources Wales, NatureScot, BirdLife International, WWF, Highlands Rewilding, and Nattergal Ltd.

Caitlin supervises MSc students in the School of Geography and teaches across postgraduate, undergraduate, and Executive Education programmes (including Leadership in Natural Capital & Biodiversity in Africa, Human Rights in Climate Emergency and War, and Nature-based Solutions to Global Challenges). She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and current Chair of the RGS-IBG Participatory Geographies Research Group (PyGyRG).

Current and recent projects

  • How can we deliver effective, equitable, and place-based environmental governance? (The Agile Initiative, 2025-26, £250,000) – Co-Lead of collaborative project with Natural Resources Wales, exploring how organisations learn and innovate in place-based governance.
  • How does risk and uncertainty shape corporate and investor engagement with carbon and nature markets? (Oxford Policy Engagement Network, 2024-25, £20,000) – PI, informing UK government consultation on Voluntary Carbon and Nature Markets.
  • Risky nature recovery (Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, 2025-present) – Postdoctoral researcher, exploring how risk and complexity shape interactions between policy, finance, and communities.
  • Participatory governance of nature recovery and nature-based solutions (Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, 2022-24) and Scaling up Nature-based Solutions in the UK (Agile Initiative, 2022-23) – led work on participatory governance and co-produced the ‘Recipe for Engagement’ guidance.

Research impact

Caitlin led the co-design of the ‘Recipe for Engagement (RfE)’ guidance, now featured in more than eight landscape-scale NbS and nature recovery projects and informing UK nature market standards. She has also held a number of advisory positions including: member of the Advisory Group for the British Standards Institute (BSI) Flex on community participation in nature markets; Stakeholder Engagement Taskforce member for BirdLife International; advisor on the Nature Finance Certification Alliance community inclusion standard; advisor to Oxfordshire’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) community engagement plan; member of the Engagement & Wellbeing Advisory Group for the National Landscapes ‘Big Chalk’ partnership, and an expert advisor for the Defra Social Science Expert Group (SSEG) review of public engagement.

Caitlin received the SoGE Engagement & Impact Award (2025, early career) and the SoGE Award for Excellence (2025) for developing an innovative approach to interdisciplinary, impact-oriented social science research grounded in experimental, relational, and highly embedded practices.

Career and qualifications

Caitlin holds a PhD in Environmental Planning (University of Gloucestershire, ESRC-funded), MSc in Social Science Research Methods (Distinction, Cardiff University), MSc in Sustainability, Planning and Environmental Policy, and BSc (Hons) in Human Geography (Cardiff University).

Publications

Caitlin is the author of more than 30 academic, policy, and practitioner publications. See Google Scholar for the full list.

Selected highlights: