Rose Cairns

University of Sussex, SPRU - Science and Technology Policy Research, Faculty Member

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My research interests span various dimensions of sustainability. I am particularly interested knowledge politics, and the intersection between science and policy making in the context of debates around sustainability. I draw inspiration, as well as theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches from political ecology, critical policy studies, environmental governance and STS. My current and recent research has spanned a number of empirical areas relevant to global sustainability, including: biodiversity conservation, climate change, geoengineering, the food/energy/water ‘nexus’, sustainable agriculture and urban digital infrastructures. Within these diverse areas, I take a critical approach to policy processes, examining questions of power, language and framing in the construction of expertise, unpicking dominant policy narratives, and examining the institutions through which the worlds of science and policy are mediated.

I am currently working on a project entitled 'Governance of Sociotechnical Transformations' (GoST) which explores transformation processes in three areas of crucial relevance to global sustainable development: energy systems, agriculture, and urban digital infrastructures. Adopting a systematic comparative approach we use sociotechnical imaginaries as a conceptual tool to make sense of how collective imaginations of transformation have determined present conditions.

I am also affiliated with the ESRC STEPS Centre at SPRU/IDS, where I work with colleagues on a methodologies work stream reflecting on the epistemic, practical and political challenges of new ways of working around sustainability issues, especially across disciplines, with activists and in relation to policy change.

Previously I was coordinator of the ESRC funded Nexus Network, a project which supported transdisciplinary research at the food-water-energy-environment nexus and worked to create meaningful links between communities of researchers, policymakers, businesses and practitioners.

I have been a Research Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit since 2012. Prior to joining SPRU, I worked as a post-doctoral research assistant at Leeds University, examining the role of boundary organisations in climate governance. I hold a degree in Social Anthropology (University of Cambridge), a Masters in Conservation and Biodiversity (Exeter University) and a PhD from the Sustainability Research Unit (Leeds University). Prior to embarking on my PhD I worked for a number of years in the environmental NGO sector, (at People & Planet, the Centre for Alternative Technology, and Community Service Volunteers).

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Transforming Imaginations? Multiple dimensionalities and temporalities in transformations to sustainability

GOST project, Mar 16, 2021

A work-in-progress paper for the T2S project on Governance of Sociotechnical Transformations (GOS... more A work-in-progress paper for the T2S project on Governance of Sociotechnical Transformations (GOST) final draft-22 nd February 2021 "Es aventurado pensar que una coordinación de palabras … pueda parecerse mucho al universe" (It is hazardous [venturesome] to think a coordination of words, can have much resemblance to the universe) Jorge Luis Borges, Other Inquisitions, 1952 1 'instances' = specific empirical examples of these constructs; 'settings' = social, geographical, institutional, jurisdictional or temporal contexts with which instances associate; 'partitioning' = the number of resolved kinds of construct. CONSTRUCTS DIMENSIONS INSTANCES Dimension H Dimension J Dimension K Dimension L in different settings Construct A attribute h-i attribute j-i attribute k-i attribute l-i settings m-n Construct B attribute l-ii settings o-p Construct C attribute k-ii attribute l-iii settings q-r Construct D attribute j-ii attribute k-iii attribute l-iv settings s-t Construct E attribute k-iv attribute l-v settings u-v Construct F attribute l-vi settings w-x Construct G attribute j-iii attribute k-v attribute l-vii settings y-z PARTITIONING unitary threefold fivefold sevenfold Moving further to the right in Figure 1, wider attention to dimensions H, J and K together, results in a fivefold partitioning of the focal constructs (imaginations or transformations)-resolving attributes associated with dimensions C, D and G, with (A & B) and (E & F) conflated. Attention to dimension K yields further more nuanced distinctions (between attributes k-i/k-ii and k-v/k-vi), allowing separable resolutions of A, B, E and F-a sevenfold categorisation of the focal constructs. Whether there are seen to be one, three, five or seven distinct kinds of imagination or transformation in play will obviously be crucial to the interpreted 'empirical' picture that is obtained. So, both the analytic and the practical implications for action can be significant. 2.3 Monothetic approaches The above implications are quite obvious under constructivist epistemologies in science and technology studies 14-and a co-productionist perspective in particular 15. But they are important to set out here, because they are often neglected in positivist approaches to social research 16. These sometimes tend to assert subjective analytic constructs in 'essentialised' ways-as if intrinsic and synonymous with the phenomena they describe 17. In wider study of sustainability transformations, for instance, simplistic assumptions can be adopted in relation to analytic constructs like 'regimes', 'niches', 'transitions', 'systems' or 'sectors'-both of instances and of these categories themselves. In effect, it is often taken for granted that the constructs correspond in expedient one-to-one ways with the more complex and dynamic patterns in how the empirical phenomena themselves are constituted, instantiated, and mutually associated in different contexts 18 .

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