Elizabeth Atkins
Biographic Data
| ID | 707856 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elizabeth Atkins |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elizabeth |
| FAMILY NAME | Atkins |
| SIGNATURE | ATKINS E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bristol |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8694-8465 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 121 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1938 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Reframing Green Prosperity
London’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone, infrastructural populism and the ‘war on drivers’ in the UK
This paper traces how right-wing populist media have shaped opposition to climate policy in the UK through the analysis of GB News coverage of the expansion of London’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in 2023. Although ULEZ was initially introduced as a public health measure for reducing air pollution, it became a political flashpoint through its framing as symbolic of a broader ‘war on drivers’. Drawing on the concept of ‘infrastructural populism…
A Net-Zero Vulnerability Index for Great Britain
National net-zero policies have varied regional impacts on patterns of investment and employment. In this paper, we introduce a Net-Zero Vulnerability Index for regions and Local Authority Districts (LADs) in England, Scotland and Wales. To do so, we draw on theories and methods from complexity economics and develop a measurement approach using measure of economic complexity, relatedness, reliance and population. Our results highlight LADs deemed…
A spatial typology of energy (in)efficiency in the private rental sector in England and Wales using Energy Performance Certificates
Like many countries globally, the private rental sector in England and Wales contains some of the lowest quality and energy inefficient properties, despite being home to some of the most vulnerable households. We present a new data product that classifies small areas based on the energy (in)efficiency characteristics of private rental properties. Newly available Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) data enables us to analyse detailed energy and h…
Participatory approaches to climate adaptation, resilience, and mitigation
For decades, social scientists and activists have advocated for equal participation of citizens in decision-making about development and equitable futures. The urgency of this call has intensified with the climate emergency, pushing communities towards resilience. Yet, the concept of participation remains contested. This systematic review examines 187 articles to understand how participatory processes in climate mitigation, adaptation, and resili…
The salt fringe as an energy periphery
Low‐carbon energy futures increasingly focus on improving the energy efficiency of homes to reduce emissions and living conditions. Energy efficiency can represent a justice‐led intervention supporting those most in need, living in the least efficient homes or with the least capacity to act, including many households relying on the private rental housing sector. This paper provides an empirically grounded intervention to argue for the necessity o…
Showerheads, coffee machines and the everyday political geographies of the green backlash
Modelling beyond growth perspectives for sustainable climate futures
IPCC Assessment Reports narrate a particular story of possible futures within a climate constrained world. The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways that are used to model these futures afford economic growth a prominent place, with its absence indicating negative sustainability outcomes. Critical post- and beyond growth perspectives, however, have shown the incompatibility between socially just and environmentally sustainable climate outcomes and compou…
Levelling up as green industrial policy
The emergence of green industrial policy globally signals a growing awareness of climate action as central to policies that address regional economic disparities. In the UK, the newly elected Labour government’s economic vision of ‘securonomics’ corresponds with such an approach: positioning net zero as a key policy goal and the next terrain of ‘levelling up’ in the UK. Any green industrial policy in the UK will be place-based: with net zero both…
The geographies of ‘stranded communities’ in energy transitions
The transition from fossil fuels poses risks to communities and industries dependent on carbon-heavy work. This article calls for geographical scholarship to engage more fully with the experiences of those ‘stranded communities’ at risk of such change. It critically reviews examples of deindustrialisation and the decline of coal communities to demonstrate how energy transitions will animate new work and extend geographical understandings of econo…
Fixing' coal in Whitehaven
This commentary explores the promises surrounding the construction of a new coalmine in Whitehaven in the UK. The impacts of the closure of carbon-heavy coal facilities increasingly feature in scholarship and policy understandings of energy transitions: illuminating the importance of the temporalities of transition. We seek to further such temporal understandings to highlight the importance of 'futures' in discussions of coal, which despite promi…
The structural power of workers in influencing energy transitions
From individuals to collectives in energy systems — A social practice, identity and rhythm inspired lens
The need for socially smart energy systems that incorporate both individual and collective social, spatial, and technical dimensions is increasing. However, the social, spatial, and technical interplay between individual and collective scales has been poorly studied and lacks a conceptual basis. Most research to date has focused on social, technical, socio-technical, or spatial approaches at the individual level, or at the collective level indepe…
Methodological lessons for negotiating power, political capabilities, and resilience in research on climate change responses
Just Transition
Transition to a post-carbon economy implies changes that are both far-reaching and unprecedented. The notion that a decarbonization transition must encompass multiple forms of justice is gaining ground. In response, the concept of Just Transition has become ever more popular – and confusion about its meaning ever greater. We argue in this paper that the term Just Transition needs a rigorous updating to develop its full conceptual power for the an…
Collecting Local Views on the Post-Covid Future of Flying Using Online Qualitative Methods
The aviation sector represents an important terrain for contemporary environmental politics and policy. This position has been complicated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to a dramatic slowdown in international travel and threatened the position of the aviation and airline sectors. The temporality of this decline remains unclear. In this article, we present online qualitative research that explores how people think their flying habits might c…
Bigger than Brexit’
Power in resilience and resilience's power in climate change scholarship
Resilience thinking has undergone profound theoretical developments in recent decades, moving to characterize resilience as a socio‐natural process that requires constant negotiation between a range of actors and institutions. This review article draws on a critical content analysis, applied to a systematic review of recent resilience literature to examine how scholarship has embraced nuanced conceptualizations of how power operates in resilience…
Populist ecologies
Right‐wing variants of populism are on the rise across the globe, creating new patterns of interaction between society and the environment. These new socio‐ecological relationships – dubbed “populist ecologies” – are not homogenous and, instead, can vary from country to country and populist to populist. In this paper, we adopt two illustrative case studies to outline two particular right‐wing populist ecologies. First, we turn to the government o…
Populist ecologies of Bitcoin
Beyond energy services
Uneven development, crypto-regionalism, and the (un-)tethering of nature in Quebec
Tracing the 'cloud
Contemporary political ecologies of hydropower
Focusing on political ecology's grounded, empirical reading of broader environmental and epistemological claims, we identify two different ways that insights from political ecology can reveal the contemporary relevance of the local scale in critiquing global hydropower infrastructure and its claims to be a part of global decarbonization agendas. Drawing from recent fieldwork in Bolivia and Brazil, we adopt frames of 'plurality'and the 'production…
Contesting the 'greening' of hydropower in the Brazilian Amazon
Bigger than Brexit’
Power in resilience and resilience's power in climate change scholarship
Resilience thinking has undergone profound theoretical developments in recent decades, moving to characterize resilience as a socio‐natural process that requires constant negotiation between a range of actors and institutions. This review article draws on a critical content analysis, applied to a systematic review of recent resilience literature to examine how scholarship has embraced nuanced conceptualizations of how power operates in resilience…
Populist ecologies
Right‐wing variants of populism are on the rise across the globe, creating new patterns of interaction between society and the environment. These new socio‐ecological relationships – dubbed “populist ecologies” – are not homogenous and, instead, can vary from country to country and populist to populist. In this paper, we adopt two illustrative case studies to outline two particular right‐wing populist ecologies. First, we turn to the government o…
Uneven development, crypto-regionalism, and the (un-)tethering of nature in Quebec
Levelling up as green industrial policy
The emergence of green industrial policy globally signals a growing awareness of climate action as central to policies that address regional economic disparities. In the UK, the newly elected Labour government’s economic vision of ‘securonomics’ corresponds with such an approach: positioning net zero as a key policy goal and the next terrain of ‘levelling up’ in the UK. Any green industrial policy in the UK will be place-based: with net zero both…
Methodological lessons for negotiating power, political capabilities, and resilience in research on climate change responses
Dams, political framing and sustainability as an empty signifier
The construction of a hydroelectric dam involves the prolonged contest between pro‐ and anti‐dam coalitions adopting various storylines to provide the project with meaning. These representations of dams are often open to reinvention and transformation, allowing for the introduction of new portrayals. This work adopts Ernesto Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe's Discourse Analytic framework to explore how supporters of the Belo Monte project in Brazil ha…
Building a Dam, Constructing a Nation
Throughout history, the planning and construction of a dam has become symbolic of wider political events and processes. This paper investigates how the Tryweryn scheme in north-west Wales in the 1950s and 1960s became a central signifier within the emergent Welsh nationalism of the period. The project, providing water to the city of Liverpool, flooded the village of Capel Celyn and displaced its 48 residents. However, the opposition to the projec…
A Questionnaire on Materialisms
Recent philosophical tendencies of "Actor-Network Theory," "Object-Oriented Ontology," and "Speculative Realism" have profoundly challenged the centrality of subjectivity in the humanities, and many artists and curators, particularly in the UK, Germany, and the United States, appear deeply influenced by this shift from epistemology to ontology. October editors asked artists, historians, and philosophers invested in these projects-from Graham Harm…
The geographies of ‘stranded communities’ in energy transitions
The transition from fossil fuels poses risks to communities and industries dependent on carbon-heavy work. This article calls for geographical scholarship to engage more fully with the experiences of those ‘stranded communities’ at risk of such change. It critically reviews examples of deindustrialisation and the decline of coal communities to demonstrate how energy transitions will animate new work and extend geographical understandings of econo…
Tracing the 'cloud
Contemporary political ecologies of hydropower
Focusing on political ecology's grounded, empirical reading of broader environmental and epistemological claims, we identify two different ways that insights from political ecology can reveal the contemporary relevance of the local scale in critiquing global hydropower infrastructure and its claims to be a part of global decarbonization agendas. Drawing from recent fieldwork in Bolivia and Brazil, we adopt frames of 'plurality'and the 'production…
Contesting the 'greening' of hydropower in the Brazilian Amazon
Fixing' coal in Whitehaven
This commentary explores the promises surrounding the construction of a new coalmine in Whitehaven in the UK. The impacts of the closure of carbon-heavy coal facilities increasingly feature in scholarship and policy understandings of energy transitions: illuminating the importance of the temporalities of transition. We seek to further such temporal understandings to highlight the importance of 'futures' in discussions of coal, which despite promi…
The structural power of workers in influencing energy transitions
Populist ecologies of Bitcoin
Edna St. Vincent Millay and Her Times
The Book of Apollonius
A Questionnaire on Materialisms
Recent philosophical tendencies of "Actor-Network Theory," "Object-Oriented Ontology," and "Speculative Realism" have profoundly challenged the centrality of subjectivity in the humanities, and many artists and curators, particularly in the UK, Germany, and the United States, appear deeply influenced by this shift from epistemology to ontology. October editors asked artists, historians, and philosophers invested in these projects-from Graham Harm…
Dammed and diversionary
Belo Monte is one of the most divisive dams in Brazilian history, becoming entangled in a thirty‐year struggle between pro‐ and anti‐dam interests over the role of the facility within a complex web of Brazilian development and the future of the Brazilian Amazon. This research explores how the proponents of Belo Monte have adopted a number of policy frames as a means of deflection, to divide the opposition and legitimize the project. It investigat…
Dams, political framing and sustainability as an empty signifier
The construction of a hydroelectric dam involves the prolonged contest between pro‐ and anti‐dam coalitions adopting various storylines to provide the project with meaning. These representations of dams are often open to reinvention and transformation, allowing for the introduction of new portrayals. This work adopts Ernesto Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe's Discourse Analytic framework to explore how supporters of the Belo Monte project in Brazil ha…
Building a Dam, Constructing a Nation
Throughout history, the planning and construction of a dam has become symbolic of wider political events and processes. This paper investigates how the Tryweryn scheme in north-west Wales in the 1950s and 1960s became a central signifier within the emergent Welsh nationalism of the period. The project, providing water to the city of Liverpool, flooded the village of Capel Celyn and displaced its 48 residents. However, the opposition to the projec…
Contesting the 'greening' of hydropower in the Brazilian Amazon
Beyond energy services
Uneven development, crypto-regionalism, and the (un-)tethering of nature in Quebec
Tracing the 'cloud
Contemporary political ecologies of hydropower
Focusing on political ecology's grounded, empirical reading of broader environmental and epistemological claims, we identify two different ways that insights from political ecology can reveal the contemporary relevance of the local scale in critiquing global hydropower infrastructure and its claims to be a part of global decarbonization agendas. Drawing from recent fieldwork in Bolivia and Brazil, we adopt frames of 'plurality'and the 'production…
Just Transition
Transition to a post-carbon economy implies changes that are both far-reaching and unprecedented. The notion that a decarbonization transition must encompass multiple forms of justice is gaining ground. In response, the concept of Just Transition has become ever more popular – and confusion about its meaning ever greater. We argue in this paper that the term Just Transition needs a rigorous updating to develop its full conceptual power for the an…
Collecting Local Views on the Post-Covid Future of Flying Using Online Qualitative Methods
The aviation sector represents an important terrain for contemporary environmental politics and policy. This position has been complicated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to a dramatic slowdown in international travel and threatened the position of the aviation and airline sectors. The temporality of this decline remains unclear. In this article, we present online qualitative research that explores how people think their flying habits might c…
Bigger than Brexit’
Power in resilience and resilience's power in climate change scholarship
Resilience thinking has undergone profound theoretical developments in recent decades, moving to characterize resilience as a socio‐natural process that requires constant negotiation between a range of actors and institutions. This review article draws on a critical content analysis, applied to a systematic review of recent resilience literature to examine how scholarship has embraced nuanced conceptualizations of how power operates in resilience…
Populist ecologies
Right‐wing variants of populism are on the rise across the globe, creating new patterns of interaction between society and the environment. These new socio‐ecological relationships – dubbed “populist ecologies” – are not homogenous and, instead, can vary from country to country and populist to populist. In this paper, we adopt two illustrative case studies to outline two particular right‐wing populist ecologies. First, we turn to the government o…
Populist ecologies of Bitcoin
The structural power of workers in influencing energy transitions
From individuals to collectives in energy systems — A social practice, identity and rhythm inspired lens
The need for socially smart energy systems that incorporate both individual and collective social, spatial, and technical dimensions is increasing. However, the social, spatial, and technical interplay between individual and collective scales has been poorly studied and lacks a conceptual basis. Most research to date has focused on social, technical, socio-technical, or spatial approaches at the individual level, or at the collective level indepe…
Methodological lessons for negotiating power, political capabilities, and resilience in research on climate change responses
Modelling beyond growth perspectives for sustainable climate futures
IPCC Assessment Reports narrate a particular story of possible futures within a climate constrained world. The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways that are used to model these futures afford economic growth a prominent place, with its absence indicating negative sustainability outcomes. Critical post- and beyond growth perspectives, however, have shown the incompatibility between socially just and environmentally sustainable climate outcomes and compou…
Levelling up as green industrial policy
The emergence of green industrial policy globally signals a growing awareness of climate action as central to policies that address regional economic disparities. In the UK, the newly elected Labour government’s economic vision of ‘securonomics’ corresponds with such an approach: positioning net zero as a key policy goal and the next terrain of ‘levelling up’ in the UK. Any green industrial policy in the UK will be place-based: with net zero both…
The geographies of ‘stranded communities’ in energy transitions
The transition from fossil fuels poses risks to communities and industries dependent on carbon-heavy work. This article calls for geographical scholarship to engage more fully with the experiences of those ‘stranded communities’ at risk of such change. It critically reviews examples of deindustrialisation and the decline of coal communities to demonstrate how energy transitions will animate new work and extend geographical understandings of econo…
Fixing' coal in Whitehaven
This commentary explores the promises surrounding the construction of a new coalmine in Whitehaven in the UK. The impacts of the closure of carbon-heavy coal facilities increasingly feature in scholarship and policy understandings of energy transitions: illuminating the importance of the temporalities of transition. We seek to further such temporal understandings to highlight the importance of 'futures' in discussions of coal, which despite promi…
A spatial typology of energy (in)efficiency in the private rental sector in England and Wales using Energy Performance Certificates
Like many countries globally, the private rental sector in England and Wales contains some of the lowest quality and energy inefficient properties, despite being home to some of the most vulnerable households. We present a new data product that classifies small areas based on the energy (in)efficiency characteristics of private rental properties. Newly available Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) data enables us to analyse detailed energy and h…
Political science (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Politics (12 works) · Economics (9 works) · Geography (9 works) · Business (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Engineering (7 works) · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance (7 works) · Epistemology (5 works)