ICS Seminar Series - Kersty Hobson

Date: Thursday 25 June 2015
Time: 11.30am - 1pm
Venue: EB.2.04, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus

Kersty Hobson 

Designing the Anthropocene? On e-waste, the circular economy and trying to be 'CLEVER'

Abstract

Issues such as electronic waste present profound and growing socio-economic, cultural, geo-political and health challenges. Proposed solutions include techno-optimist strategies, as well as calls to reconfigure the economy into loops of material circularity. In this talk, I will discuss an ongoing UK-based project that aims to explore the realities of creating and sustaining such circularity, from a chemical, materials, design and socio-cultural perspective. Focusing in particular on the last two sub-fields, I will consider the role that citizens are ascribed and can/do play in such reconfigurations.

Biography

Dr Kersty Hobson is course director of the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Policy, University of Oxford. She is an environmental social scientist with research interests in sustainable consumption, environmental governance and multi-level processes of socio-ecological change. She has held academic positions at the Australian National University and the University of Birmingham, and her research has examined household sustainable consumption practices; environmental non-governmental organisations; animal geographies; climate change governance and public deliberation; and food geographies.