Social Studies of Environment and Sustainability

The proposed programme of Advanced Training courses, scheduled for delivery across a single week, will offer doctoral students a suite of coordinated training events under the broad theme of 'Social Studies of Environment and Sustainability'. In its broadest sense, sustainability engages with policies and lifestyles, explores the roles of political and economic actors in helping or hindering transitions to more manageable modes of governance in relation to natural resources, and encourages more equitable relations between and among communities locally and worldwide. UEA's reputation for the interdisciplinary study of these course topics is unrivalled and all participants will benefit from training delivered by world leading social scientists and drawing on research excellence from within and outside the University of East Anglia.

A focus on 'Social Studies of Environment and Sustainability' allows each specialist training course to address issues of rights, values, knowledge, governance and social norms at the heart of those societal challenges identified in the Horizon 2020 programme. The aim is to encourage reflection and to equip PGR students with policy-relevant tools for addressing some of the most challenging questions currently facing 21st century social science. Specifically, the four training courses in the overall suite will focus on:

(1) Ideational Theories and Discursive Methodologies in Policy Analysis: The Case of Environmental & Sustainability
Policy.
(2) Research Methods in Global Environmental Justice (GEJ) Research.
(3) The Interdisciplinary PhD: Conceptual and Practical Approaches to the Nature of Interdisciplinary Research.
(4) Participatory Research Approaches in Global Contexts

This truly advanced and original set of training courses is designed to supplement core PGR training pathways in UEA and to complement and enrich current offerings within the NCRM Advanced Training Network. In line with the ESRC's (2009) definition of advanced training as being 'additional to core training within an individual doctoral training pathway' (ESRC, 2009), some of these courses will offer an advanced conceptual focus (Global Environmental Justice), whilst others address the epistemological identity of a doctoral project (Interdisciplinary PhD), specific methodologies, the outcomes they can produce, and the broader implications of these outcomes in terms of impact (Participatory Research, Ideational Theories & Discursive Methodologies in Policy Analysis).

The suite of courses will be offered, in a block, over a single week in June (and will be repeated once a year for three years). This will allow interested parties to attend one or more individual courses depending on their needs, or to attend the whole week of courses, at a reduced rate, if their research interests engage with issues of environment and sustainability, across the wider spectrum. The courses have also been specifically designed to benefit PGR students at various stages of their doctoral programme and each will follow a similar delivery format. In the first instance, this will involve a one or two day workshop combining lectures, discussions, and data-driven sessions focussing on the student's research data. Courses and ongoing learning will continue afterwards, via the provision of an online forum (and repository of relevant resources and links) for participants, moderated by UEA, as well as the offer of a one-to-one follow-up tutorial for PGR students. This will allow postgraduate attendees to benefit from expert advice about their own research at a time when that advice is most needed. This format and suite of courses, we believe, will afford PGR students a genuinely multi and interdisciplinary opportunity to network with world leading researchers and other PGR students addressing similar research issues and challenges.

The University of East Anglia ranks 23rd in the world in Environmental Sciences and 27th in Geography (QS World Rankings, 2014). As a recent recipient of substantial ESRC funding for the Data Research Centre for Smart Analytics and of AHRC, BBSRC and NERC Doctoral Training Partnership funding, the University understands the need to go beyond training doctoral researchers in discipline specific tools. The University's doctoral training strategy ensures interaction within each cohort, across cohorts, with the public and with business. The proposed suite of training courses would support training within ESRC cohorts, but also across to AHRC (policy) and BBSRC/NERC (environment) cohorts as well as to EU-funded UEA researchers and to researchers at other institutions, particularly within the Eastern Academic Research Consortium (UEA, Essex, Kent). Past advanced training events have attracted students from institutions including Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Goldsmiths, LSE and Warwick.

The "Social Studies of Environment and Sustainability" programme has been developed by the Faculty of Social Sciences, drawing upon the research skills of world class social scientists across three faculties of the University. This has been distilled into an original interdisciplinary programme of advanced training, designed to supplement that already offered by the Advanced Training Network. Our programme is designed to impact on a variety of actors by focusing on providing participants, at whatever stage they may be within their research programme, with the opportunity to develop new perspectives and lenses on research. This critical focus may be achieved by utilising methodologies, theories, tools and techniques that may be new or novel within their field or through critical application of existing techniques. Each course has been designed with its own specific focus and outcomes but also to be a theme within the wider programme.

This approach will be of direct benefit to participants who will be recruited from multiple disciplines at the interface of social, environmental and political sciences and external partners or colleagues. Researchers will be encouraged to disseminate their learning through application to their own research and by presenting their outputs widely to colleagues.

Specific arrangements have been made to facilitate networking opportunities between participants and with course leaders as well as the experts who designed and developed the courses. This will be both during and after training, through an online presence and moderated forum, and through voluntary one-to-one tutorials post training and reflection to support the application of the training to the individual's research.

More widely it is anticipated that wider communities both within and outside academia will benefit from researchers trained in skills that cross disciplines and encourage innovation and initiative. We will continue to build capacity by future bids in this area. In the longer term it is not unreasonable to assume that highly trained researchers, who understand the importance of a multifaceted approach to problem solving and have the understanding to develop novel techniques to supplement traditional thinking, will benefit the wider population including the general public, industry and the third sector.

The Faculty of Social Sciences is particularly mindful of the latest World Social Science Report which aims "to mobilise the wider social science community to take the lead in developing a more integrated and transformative science of global change and sustainability" (ISSC2013). We believe that UEA is particularly well placed to promote the "new solutions-oriented science of global change and sustainability" envisioned (P26) by influencing and training new generations of social scientists who can communicate across disciplines and widely engage with other sectors of society.