Category Archives: greener futures team

Alan Bradshaw

Professor of Marketing

Themes: Thriving communities, Greener futures

Expertise: Marketing, consumer research

My research problematises basic assumptions regarding consumer attitudes towards climate change and I do not take it for granted that people really do want to save the world. Rather, engaging with the field of pscyhoanalysis and reviewing end-of-the-world-as-spectacle artefacts, like Hollywood movies, a more complex and troubling analysis is possible.

I ask: what if the contradictory and partial solutions to climate change correspond with a general ambivalence in our psyche that explains other modes of self-destruction and self-abuse. These murky parts of consumer desire that relate to disaster was further explored in my recent co-edited book The Dictionary of Coronavirus Culture. I have published these ideas in academic journals and media outlets, such as The Guardian.

Jennifer Cole

Lecturer in Global and Planetary Health

Themes: Reducing health inequalities, Greener futures, Thriving communities

Expertise: Biological anthropology, planetary health, critical health geopolitics, global health

My work is highly interdisciplinary across the fields of human, global, planetary, eco and one health, focusing how environments impact on human health across the lifecourse. (Un)health environments can be natural environments, urban environments, political ecologies or historical legacies of colonialism, repression or conflict.

My experience includes over a decade working at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, a policy think tank, and as Public Health Advisor to the Rockefeller Economic Council on Planetary Health at the Oxford Martin School, Oxford University. I am a member of the Planetary Health Alliance and a World Health Organization accredited Infodemic Manager.

José-Rodrigo Córdoba-Pachón

Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems

Themes: Thriving communities, Greener futures

Expertise: Creativity, systems thinking, food waste

I am interested in studying complex situations arising in the intersection of sustainability and digital innovation.  I am passionate about the use of creativity and systems thinking ideas or methods to intervene and collaborate with other professionals in such situations.

Currently I am working with academics and practitioners to generate a blue print to help university campuses promote circular economy ideas in their accommodation and catering services.

Dr Ruth Cruickshank

Humanities Representative, Living Sustainably Catalyst

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

Expertise: ‘Leftover’ meanings in food; global production and consumption of food; eating disorders (notably the discourses around OSFED, the most prevalent yet least known eating disorder)

I am passionate about revealing the unthought-of constructs of power; effects of trauma and exploitation; and critical potential bound up with representations of food, drink and their production and consumption. My work is at thenexus of literary and cultural criticism and comparative, food studies and the medical humanities, examining discourses and literary, philosophical and visual texts.

My latest book is Leftovers: Eating, Drinking and Rethinking with Case Studies from Post-war French Fiction and I am currently working on the politics of not knowing and of representation of eating disorders, and supervising PhD projects on interrogating representation of meat substitutes and diasporic Desi foodways.

I also publish on documentary aesthetics and postcolonial global food chains; intertextual geopolitics and gastrodiplomacy; understanding of alterity revealed by comparing structuralist and poststructuralist thought involving food; relationships between globalisation, cultural capital and symbolic violence; and questions of recycling and cultural production.

I am a founder member of The Food Group at RHUL, co-organising events raising awareness of the intersection of sustainability and culture, Inedible, Unpalatable and Indigestible and Food and Drink on the Brink.

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Klaus Dodds

Professor of Geopolitics, Director of Living Sustainably

Themes: Greener futures, Reducing health inequalities

Expertise: Environmental geopolitics, polar and ocean conservation, health geopolitics, public communication, and forecasting

I am passionate about environmental matters, and my work focuses on real-world challenges and problems that require evidence synthesis, expert advice and futures-orientated thinking.  My experience includes serving as specialist adviser to UK Parliament, consultant to business and environmental stakeholders in ocean and polar conservation, member of the DEFRA COVID futures advisory group and NATO Strategic Foresight Analysis contributor and would like to continue to work with diverse stakeholders and partners. My latest book, Border Wars (Penguin 2022) addressed the implications of climate change for the political geographies of the earth.

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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.

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.

Redell Olsen

Professor of English, Director of Living Sustainably

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

Together with Klaus Dodds and Caroline Harris, I curated the COP26 Forum at Royal Holloway in 2021, which brought together academic, local, and national expertise on climate solutions, policy, and research. I am an arts practitioner, poet and academic who is committed to addressing environmental concerns, biodiversity, plant humanities, climate literacy and justice through research and teaching.

My own creative and academic work approaches the reuse and repurposing of apparently outdated technologies, archives, and historical materials as the basis for innovative literary and artistic practice-based research. My film Now Circa (1918) was shortlisted for an AHRC best research film of the year award in 2018. I was awarded the DARE art prize in 2020 for a collaboration with BioDar scientists at the University of Leeds, the Tetley Art Gallery in Leeds and the Museum of Science and Media in Bradford. I have taught poetic practice, visual arts, literature, environmental literatures, and creative writing at undergraduate and postgraduate level and I am an expert in the field of practice-based research.

I am interested in environmental policy, and specifically how the arts and humanities can be instrumental in the shaping of thriving and sustainable communities within the university and more widely. I have previously collaborated with local groups, scientists, galleries, museums, science and heritage institutions through creative projects and practice-led workshops.

Website: http://redellolsen.co.uk/

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