Professor Katrina Brown

Chair in Social Sciences

Role

Professor Katrina Brown is Chair in Social Science at the Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI); she took up her post in April 2012. Kate is currently completing an ESRC Professorial Fellowship on ‘Resilient development in Social Ecological Systems’ (2009-2012) which aims to advance theoretical and conceptual understanding of resilience across the social sciences and inform policy discussions and governance strategies which take a resilience approach. The objectives are to define the framework of a broad social science of resilience through a comprehensive review of the concept applied across relevant social science disciplines and analysis in areas which are currently under-emphasised in the study of resilience in linked social ecological systems. This includes developing a political ecology of resilience, investigating diverse social constructions of resilience in policy and practice, using discourse analysis and mental models; and analysing the winners and losers in a resilience approach.

Kate is part of the interdisciplinary Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, formally holding positions of Deputy Director for Social Sciences, and leader of the Programme on international Development. She has led research teams on Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation and is co-Chair of the International Programme Advisory Committee DFID-NERC-ESRC ESPA Programme. She is also co-editor of the journal Global Environmental Change. Kate is a member of the Geography department in the College of Life and Environmental Sciences.

Profile

Kate is an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist, and holds degrees in both natural and social sciences. She specialises in environmental change, development, vulnerability and resilience, and has experience in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia. She has advised numerous international development and environmental organisations, and has led several international collaborative research initiatives.

Previous roles

1994-          Lecturer, School of Development Studies UEA (Professor since 2004)
1991-1994  Senior Research Associate, CSERGE, UEA and UCL
1990-1991  Research Associate, Countryside Change Unit, University of Newcastle

Academic and research interests

Kate’s research concerns environmental change and how individuals and societies understand and respond to change. She is interested in issues of resilience, vulnerability and sustainability and the different policy options for dealing with environmental change, and in the relationship between ecosystem services and human well-being. Currently much of her research in these areas is focused on climate change and on management of coastal resources. Kate has worked in other contexts, particularly on terrestrial conservation and forest ecosystems.  Interests include:

• Environmental change
• Resilience, vulnerability and adaptation
• Ecosystem services and human well-being
• Coastal and marine social ecological systems
• Political ecology

Selected Publications

Brown, K., 2011 Sustainable Adaptation: An Oxymoron? Climate and Development 3:21-31.
Brown, K. and Westaway, E., 2011 Agency, capacity and resilience to environmental change: Lessons from human development, well-being and disasters. Annual Review of Environment and Resources.
Bunce, M., K. Brown and S. Rosendo, 2010. Policy misfits, climate change and cross-scale vulnerability in coastal Africa: How development projects undermine resilience. Environmental Science and Policy. 13: 485-49736:14.1–14.22
Corbera E. and Brown, K., 2010. Offsetting benefits: Analysing access to forest carbon, Environment and Planning A 42:1739-1761
Adger, W.N., Brown, K., Conway, D., 2010. Progress in Global Environmental Change? Global Environmental Change 20.4: 547–549
Brooks, N., Grist, N. and Brown, K., 2009. Development futures in the context of climate change: Challenging the present and learning from the past, Development Policy Review 27.6: 741-765
Wolf, J., Brown, K.,Conway, D. 2009 Ecological citizenship and climate change: perceptions and practice, Environmental Politics, 18.4: 503-521.
Fisher, J. and Brown, K., 2009. Wind energy on the Isle of Lewis: implications for deliberative planning Environment and Planning A 41:2516-2536.

Qualifications  

1990 PhD Rural Development, University of Nottingham (ESRC CASE Studentship).
Thesis examined women’s collective action in semi-arid eastern Kenya and its impact on poverty, vulnerability and innovation.
1985 MSc Tropical Agricultural Development, University of Reading (Economics and Planning specialism).
1983 BSc (Hons) Agricultural and Environmental Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Contact details