"Political lives of anticipation: weather, climate and water knowledge in Belize" with Sophie Haines

Past Event

Date
30 January 2018, 1:30pm - 3:00pm

Location
INSIS
64 Banbury Road, Oxford

Part of the Hilary Term Seminar Series organised by the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society

About the speaker

Sophie Haines is James Martin Fellow and ESRC Future Research Leaders Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at the University of Oxford. She completed her PhD in anthropology at University College London in 2011. Before joining InSIS she worked as a parliamentary researcher in the UK House of Commons, focusing on health policy among other areas.

Sophie’s research focuses on environmental knowledge and decision-making in contexts of social and ecological change. She is interested in the interfaces of anthropology and science and technology studies, of natural and social sciences, and of research and policy-making processes. To date her research has explored perceptions of the environment, changing livelihoods, infrastructural development, and the use of scientific predictions for resource and hazard management. She has carried out ethnographic fieldwork and interview-based studies in the UK, Belize and Kenya.

Sophie is currently leading the project Envisioning Emergent Environments: Negotiating Science and Resource Management in Rural Communities. Funded by the ESRC Future Research Leaders scheme, the study examines the implications of science-led watershed management interventions for rural residents in Belize. Sophie has previously worked on the DFID-funded research programme ‘REACH: Improving water security for the poor’, the Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship (OMPORS), and the NERC-funded project Improving Predictions of Drought for User Decision-Making (IMPETUS).