Amany Elbanna

Reader in Information Systems, School of Business and Management

Themes: Thriving communities, Greener futures

Expertise: Sustainable digital transformation, new ways of working, sustainable working and living with emerging technologies

I am passionate about digital transformation that works for organisations, people and society. My work focuses on real-world issues, challenges and problems and current technologies. It is appreciative thriving to discover how digital transformation can be part of the solution, what works in what context and for whom. It finds evidence and insights to help shape local solutions that tackle challenges and improve outcomes for organisations, people and society.

My business experience includes serving as a consultant to business. My forthcoming book, Digital Transformation: Theories, Practices and Challenges (Sage, 2023), addresses success in achieving sustainable digital transformation.

Helen Gilbert

Professor of Theatre

Themes: Greener futures, Reducing health inequalities

Expertise: Environmental arts, Indigenous climate activism, postcolonial ecocriticism, environmental justice

Helen Gilbert researches environmental activism in the creative arts in Australia, Canada and the Pacific, particularly in Indigenous and other marginalised communities. She has curated a major London exhibition on the theme of Indigenous arts and sustainability and recently contributed to a group exhibition on humanities research and climate change, organised the Rachel Carson Center in Munich in conjunction with COP26.

She is now developing a new international project that will study water-related eco-activism over the last three decades, particularly in marginalised communities. The project aims to advance knowledge of the crucial, global role live arts have already played, and could play in the future, in spurring civic and political action to protect marine and freshwater ecosystems across the world. Helen is on the advisory board of FOGGS (Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability) a UN-related ‘think-and-do’ tank, based on Brussels, and is also involved in environmentally focused research projects at Yale (USA) and the University of Victoria in Canada.

Liz Gloyne

Reader in Latin Language and Literature

Themes: Thriving communities

Expertise: Gender equality, family ethics, engaging with the future through the past

My work focuses on issues of gender and family structures in antiquity, and offers significant lessons for how we tackle problems around gender and equality in contemporary society. My expertise in classical reception extends to how we might think through the climate crisis by using ancient Greece and Rome as a way to explore environmental catastrophe and how to tell stories differently.

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Caroline Harris

PhD Researcher in English (Poetic Practice), Living Sustainably ECR representative for School of Humanities

Themes: Greener futures, Biodiversity and natural capital, Sustainability and creativity

Expertise: In both my research and personal life, I have a strong commitment to environmental and ethical issues and the more-than-human world. As a poet, publisher and editor, I particularly value the role that creative practice can play in forming connections, asking questions and engaging with different audiences and discourses.

Recently, I was Administrator for Royal Holloway’s COP26 Forum, facilitating and helping to organise and publicise more than 25 events bringing together academics, students, professional services departments, local community, and online attendees from across the world. As part of the Forum I chaired a panel discussion on Health in the Anthropocene and performed at the Poetics Research Centre’s ‘Out of the Woods / Words’.

I have worked with staff, parents and pupils at my local primary school to help it gain Eco Schools status, and written on ‘green household management’ for a book and magazine column. My current poetic practice research focuses on deer, and the complexities of our human relationships with and attitudes towards them; an essay collection, Scrub: Journeys into the Undergrowth, has been shortlisted for publication by The Emma Press.

Judith Hawley

Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature, Member of The Food Group

Themes: Greener futures, Sustainability and creativity

Expertise: I am committed to a greener future in my personal and professional life.

As a founder member of The Food Group at RHUL, I have been involved in two events which raise awareness of the intersection of sustainability and culture, Inedible, Unpalatable and Indigestible and Food and Drink on the Brink. My work on literature, culture and heritage challenges traditional boundaries and connects past and future. My publications explore the boundaries between amateur and professional. In the heritage sector, my role as a Trustee of Pope’s Grotto Preservation Trust and of The London Luminaries helps build communities and generate income for a group of twelve historic properties in South West London. As a frequent contributor to radio and TV programmes I participate in current debates about the future of the past. I am determined to apply my expertise and extend my knowledge to support the sustainability of the natural and cultural environment.

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Paul Haynes

Lecturer in Marketing

Themes: Greener futures

Expertise: Energy technology uptake, ‘sustainable consumption’ campaigning

My research focus is on energy technology uptake factors, analysing the way new approaches to marketing and social campaigning are developing in order to shape new markets for sustainable energy sources and technologies. I have experience working with policy makers and related stakeholder through the Tyndall Centre, ICCIRP, Cambridge University’s CSaP policy fellows network and in partnership with data and policy consultants Cambridge Economics. I have published research on sustainable production, energy policy instruments and opportunities for marketing sustainable energy.

Martina Hutton

Senior Lecturer in Marketing

Themes: Thriving communities, Reducing health inequalities

Expertise: Consumer poverty, social stress complexities of economic/social disadvantage, consumption adequacy and wellbeing, community-based research methodologies

For 14 years I have worked as a researcher with diverse communities experiencing a range of intersecting inequalities, specifically focusing on deprived consumption, economic and social exclusion. My experience includes partnering with national and international stakeholders who represent groups experiencing hunger, poverty and post-prison restrictions.

I have published widely on the issues of consumer poverty, wellbeing and marketplace exclusion and have expertise in a range of social justice research methods (eg critical PAR, emancipatory praxis). Currently I am working on a funded impact study with a cross sector multi-stakeholder initiative, examining a range of sustainable food well-being solutions designed by the community for the community.

Zena Kamash

Senior Lecturer in Roman Archaeology, Dept of Classics

Themes: Reducing health inequalities, Sustainability and creativity, Thriving communities

I am British Iraqi archaeologist who is strongly committed to improving wellbeing amongst communities, especially in the UK and the Middle East. I am currently PI on a British Academy-funded project titled ‘Crafting Heritage for Wellbeing in Iraq’, which brings together researchers in the UK and Iraq across the fields of archaeology, heritage, psychology and arts/craft practice to explore how bringing together heritage and crafting can improve the wellbeing of people who have experienced conflict.

I am also writing a book titled Heritage and Healing in Syria and Iraq (under contract with Manchester University Press) that challenges existing approaches to cultural heritage reconstruction in post-conflict contexts and explores the ways in which such reconstruction might be more effectively framed to promote healing and reparation.

Outside academia, I am a trustee for Oxfordshire Mind, where I work to reduce mental health inequalities to ensure that everyone who needs support is able to access it.

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Dr James Kent

Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies

Themes: Reducing health inequalities, Sustainability and creativity

Expertise: Curatorial and photographic practice, public engagement and visual cultures

I am passionate about curatorial and photographic practice, public engagement and storytelling. My research-led photography projects combine portraiture with social documentary – engaging and raising awareness about challenges faced by different communities. I photographed Cuba in the wake of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro’s death in 2016, curating exhibitions in both the UK and Cuba.

My latest project makes interdisciplinary connections between visual arts, health and wellbeing. Working alongside colleagues at the University of Cambridge, I co-founded the Generation COVID UK collaborative research group – a consortium of clinicians, healthcare professionals, midwives, researchers and creative practitioners whose work involves collaborating with and/or supporting parents of babies born during the pandemic. The project has featured in The Lancet and The Independent. Work from this collaboration will be showcased in a series of events at Cambridge Festival 2022. I am keen to use my experience and creative practice to raise awareness and drive change.

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Ruth Livesey

Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature and Thought

Themes: Sustainability and creativity, Thriving communities

Expertise: Community engagement through creative practice/research; urban/rural relations; sustainability and history of transport; nineteenth-century natural history.

My research focuses on the social and cultural effects of industrialisation in the nineteenth century. I also work with arts organisations, museums, and community groups using literature to explore sense of place in smaller towns and communities undergoing major challenges now. My last book – Writing the Stagecoach Nation (2016) – explored the ways in which writers helped nineteenth-century readers come to terms with the new infrastructure of the railways in Britain by looking back to the capillary networks of the horse-drawn stage coach system.

My current research focuses on the idea of ‘provincialism’ and fictions of the provincial town c. 1820-1930 and the cultural legacy of this thinking. I have also written about nineteenth-century practices and knowledges drawn from natural history and philosophy as an anticipation of present eco-critical thinking. I am a passionate advocate of the value of interdisciplinary research and creative practice in addressing the challenges of the present.