Mediating Climate Change in the City: Experimenting with Urban Responses

March 19-23 2012

Durham University, UK

Deadline for submitting abstracts: 15 December 2011

The aim of the Mediating Climate Change in the City workshop is to provide a focal point for dialogue and collaboration for early career researchers working in the broad area of urban responses to climate change and to develop capacity for advancing scholarship in this field. 

Focus on early career researchers

Harriet Bulkeley, Gareth Edwards (Durham University) and Simon Guy (University of Manchester)

Responding to climate change is increasingly regarded by international agencies, national governments and municipal authorities as an ‘urgent agenda’ for the world’s cities. Partly in response to this growing policy interest and reflecting a growing diversity in the subject matter of environmental, urban and science and technology studies, ‘cities and climate change’ has become a focus of academic inquiry. Reflecting diverse disciplinary roots – from political science to urban metabolism, development studies to actor network theory – there are now a range of approaches being advanced through which to understand how, why and with what effect urban responses to climate change are taking place. While the interdisciplinary nature of this inquiry is one of its core strengths, creating the opportunity for more integrated analyses of the possibilities and limitations of addressing climate change through the city, it also poses challenges for establishing common understanding and for advancing research in this field. Such challenges are particularly acute for early career researchers, where the demands of interdisciplinary research and career progression can come into conflict. The aim of the Mediating Climate Change in the City workshop is to provide a focal point for dialogue and collaboration for early career researchers working in the broad area of urban responses to climate change and to develop capacity for advancing scholarship in this field. Researchers undertaking doctoral or postdoctoral research with interests in a broad range of theoretical perspectives that seek to engage with the ways in which climate change is being governed, addressed, and encountered in the urban arena, including those focused on institutional theory, policy studies, political economy, governmentality, practice theory, actor-network theory and science and technology studies, are invited to participate. Through a mixture of research presentations, debate, collaborative small group work and an exhibition, the workshop will focus on three core issues:

• What form are urban responses to climate change taking? What evidence is there of  governance responses, of policy, of strategic and systemic transitions, of climate change experiments, of informality, of subversion?

• What roles are different actors and institutions playing in these governance responses? How and why do these roles vary between the public/private, local/transnational actors? How might we conceive of the roles of things, artifacts, networks and materials in urban climate responses?

• What are the implications and consequences of urban climate change responses, for example in relation to the extent of socio-technical change, or for issues of social and environmental justice?

In addressing these issues, the workshop will seek to interrogate the value of different theoretical perspectives for understanding urban climate change governance. In particular, it will involve participants in thinking through how their work engages with some of the core problematics of social science theory – for example, of authority, power, agency and justice – and how the case of urban climate change can enable us to re-examine these concepts.

Prospective participants should submit a short abstract (300 words) detailing their current research in the broad field of urban climate change governance by December 15th 2011 to Gareth Edwards (). As a general guide, we expect that PhD students will be at least in their 2nd year of study and that postdoctoral researchers will have completed their PhD no more than five years ago, but we are happy to consider applications that fall outside of these terms. Thanks to the sponsorship of the ESRC Urban Transitions: climate change, global cities and the transformation of socio-technical networks (Award Number: RES-066-27-0002) Fellowship at Durham University we will be able to cover reasonable travel and accommodation costs for successful participants. If you have any questions or would like to get in touch, please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to welcoming you to Durham in March 2012.