News, Jobs, Events, Opportunities and lots more...
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A quick round up of the latest news, jobs and opportunities
Events
Festival of Nature 2026
Professional Events
Monday 8 - Friday 12 June, Bristol
Festival of Nature’s 2026 professional events programme brings together researchers, practitioners, businesses, creatives and policymakers to explore innovative approaches to nature recovery, wellbeing, accessibility, urban development and environmental action.
Through talks, workshops, networking events and discussions, the programme creates space for collaboration, learning and new ideas inspired by both local and national perspectives.
Accessible & Online Events
Sunday 7 - Sunday 14 June, Bristol & online
The Festival of Nature's online events give you the opportunity to join in wherever you are along with a selection of in-person events which have specific options for people with disabilities or chronic illness.
Read more
British Academy Ideas Festival
Friday 19 & Saturday 20 June, London
The British Academy Ideas Festival brings together world-class thinkers, researchers, artists and audiences for a free weekend of conversation, debate and discovery in the heart of London.
From the medieval mysteries of the northern lights to the ethics of everyday AI, our funded researchers will share innovative work that is dismantling conventional wisdom and informing the society we want to create.
Talk: Social and spatial dimensions of low carbon energy transitions
Monday 22 June, 1-2pm, University of Exeter (Penryn) & online
ACCESS Director Patrick Devine-Wright is delivering the University of Exeter’s ESI (Environmental Sustainability Institute) Challenge of the Month talk for June on:
Social and spatial dimensions of low carbon energy transitions.
Patrick will share his energy research findings, taking a place-based approach to understanding social dimensions of low carbon energy transitions, specifically the siting of controversial large-scale infrastructures such as grid powerlines, drawing on the concept of spatial imaginaries. He will also talk about the research/policy agenda, sharing insights about practices of boundary spanning from ACCESS.
Join online with this link.
Conference: The Exeter Climate Forum
Monday 29 June - Friday 3 July, University of Exeter
Amid accelerating climate risks and rapidly advancing science, the Exeter Climate Forum returns as a unique convening space between COPs – bringing together global leaders, researchers, innovators and the local community to shape responses to the world’s most pressing climate challenges.
Last year’s Forum welcomed over 1000 attendees over several events and generated significant momentum around new research collaborations and policy insights. This year, the programme is expanding further, with confirmed contributions from high‑profile speakers including Nigel Topping – Chair of the Climate Change Committee, Rain Newton-Smith – Chief Executive of the CBI, and Chief Scientific Advisers across UK government.
At the heart of the forum will be the Exeter Climate Conference, with all confirmed speakers so far shown here.
Workshop: Creating Clarity from Complexity Workshop
Visualising and communicating climate and environmental assessments for policy and practice
Thursday 9 - Friday 10 July, London
This two-day interdisciplinary workshop, organised by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and the Schools of Psychology and Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, will share up-to-date understandings, challenges and opportunities for communicating climate and environmental assessments with diverse audiences.
Funding
Wellcome Accelerator Awards
Researchers of Black, Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage in the UK are currently underrepresented in research funding and experience higher rates of career attrition.
This scheme will support researchers of Black, Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage in the UK to undertake activities that put them in a stronger position to reach their next career stage within academia. The funding can be used for research or research-adjacent activities, such as training, secondments, and networking.
Awarded researchers will undertake activities that help them build a stronger profile to make successful career transitions.
Deadline for applications: Wednesday 25 August
British Academy: SHAPE Involve and Engage
SHAPE I&E is an exciting opportunity for humanities and social sciences researchers from across the UK to seek imaginative new ways to engage with the public, delivering innovative projects in partnership with a gallery, library, archive, or museum, or performing arts organisation.
The awards of up to £8,000 offer the opportunity to think outside the box, test a new methodology and be ambitious in your approach to engaging a public audience with your research.
Alongside sessions on evaluation and working with your audiences, award holders will have the opportunity to share their plans with other workshop attendees. You will act as critical friends and sounding boards, sharing ideas, giving feedback and troubleshooting possible challenges, and forming a network of support through the duration of the project development and delivery.
SHAPE Involve and Engage 2027–28 Information webinar
Monday 29 June, 6pm
Guidance on the application process, and an opportunity to ask questions. Register here
Deadline for applications: Tuesday 15 September, 5pm
Pre-announcement: Enhancing resilience to wildfires in the wildland-urban interface
Apply for funding to deliver collaborative research projects with partners from the US, Canada or both to improve understanding of and resilience to wildfire occurrence and impacts in the wildland-urban interface.
You must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding.
The full economic cost (FEC) of the UK component can be up to £1.58 million. Matched equivalent resources are anticipated from participating funders (NSF, NSERC, SSHRC and CIHR) for US and Canada applicants.
The UK component of your project must start by 12 February 2027 and last for 36 months.
Jobs
Postdoctoral Researcher in the Political Economy of Net Zero (University of Oxford)
Join a major UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project exploring how the UK can deliver a fair and effective transition to net zero. Based at the Environmental Change Institute, this role focuses on rethinking the political economy of decarbonisation across key sectors including energy, housing, transport, and food.
Working with Dr Donal Brown, you will play a central role in delivering a core work package examining how ownership structures, governance systems, business models, and value logics shape the outcomes and public legitimacy of the net zero transition. Your research will combine political economy, economic history, sociology, and sustainability studies to analyse current decarbonisation pathways and explore alternative models capable of delivering more equitable social and environmental outcomes.
Deadline: Thursday 11 June, 12 noon
Research Associate on People-Centred Climate Resilience (CAST, University of Bath)
The UK Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) is seeking a Research Associate to contribute to a major new research programme on People-Centred Climate Resilience (PCR).
The role will principally involve conducting a longitudinal cross-national survey on major life choices, including survey design, data collection and analysis, and disseminating findings to create impact.
This part-time (0.6 FTE) post is available for a fixed-term period of 42 months, planned to start from 1 October 2026.
Deadline for applications: Tuesday 16 June
Apply here
PhD studentships
Fully funded PhD, University of Exeter
Decommissioning Cultures and Communities: understanding culture change from operation to decommissioning in a large nuclear facility
This PhD, supervised by Leila Dawney and Karen Bickerstaff, is focused on the nuclear industry and looks at how identity, culture and community evolve in response to a changing work environment.
It comes with four years' stipend and a generous research allowance.
Deadline for applications: Wednesday 24 June
Fully funded PhD, University of Manchester
Institutional Cultures and Citizen Engagement for Net Zero Decision Making
This PhD provides an opportunity to develop research as part of the new PACT (Production and Consumption Transformations) Centre. PACT is a four-year research centre jointly funded by UK Research and Innovation and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). It is a partnership between the Universities of Leeds, Manchester and Sussex.
Deadline for applications: Thursday 9 July
Opportunities
Apply: Net+ Leadership Academy
The ESRC-funded Centre for Net Positive Health and Climate Solutions (Net+ Centre), based at the University of Exeter, focuses on inter-disciplinary approaches to tackling health and climate challenges, and has involvement from across the arts & humanities, social sciences and health sciences.
They are currently recruiting to a Leadership Academy, which will be a cohort of up to 25 early and mid-career researchers from across academic research, public sector, NGO's and charities, and business and creative industries.
The Net+ Leadership Academy will come together for a 3-day residential retreat each year, over three years (2026-2028 inclusive), with each retreat focusing on a particular topic of concern for health and climate researchers.
A range of expert speakers will introduce the topic and open up spaces for discussion amongst the participants. Each retreat will also provide opportunities for training, knowledge exchange and mentoring. Net+ Leadership Academy retreats will be held in different locations around the UK.
If you have any queries, please e-mail: netpositiveLeadershipAcademy@exeter.ac.uk
Closing date: Friday 26 June, 9am
Call for papers (Special Issue): Toward a Psychological Study of Environmental Racism
The aim of this special issue in the Journal of Social Issues is to encourage the field of psychology to move toward a racism-conscious study of environmental issues, to engage in a fruitful dialogue with the social sciences that have attended more closely to environmental injustice, and to demonstrate the utility of applying psychological approaches to such studies.
Together, the articles in this special issue can begin to formalise the psychological study of environmental racism in order to combat this wicked problem, to amplify the voices of those subject to environmental harms, and to imagine radical alternatives to the status quo of racialised violence.
Deadline for abstracts: Thursday 25 June, 11.59pm
Call for papers (Symposium): Telling (Other) Energy Stories: A Decade of Energy Humanities
Tuesday 15 – Wednesday 16 September, Bristol
The University of Exeter's Nuclear Societies Research Group, in collaboration with the University of Bristol's Centre for Environmental Humanities, is pleased to share a call for papers for our annual symposium entitled "Telling (Other) Energy Stories: A Decade of Energy Humanities", to be held in Bristol on 15-16 September 2026.
The symposium aims to bring together scholars from a range of disciplines to take stock of the field of energy humanities, share their scholarship, and collectively chart new paths for research. We especially welcome early career scholars and PhD students, for which a small number of travel grants may be made available for participating presenters.
Expert Review of IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has announced that the Expert Review for the Second Order Draft of the Special Report on Climate Change and Cities is now open until 3 July.
Registration closes: Friday 26 June, 9.59pm
ACCESS Autumn School 2026
Monday 12 – Wednesday 14 October, Cumberland Lodge, Windsor
Join a small group of environmental social scientists from diverse sectors at our final residential training event – the ACCESS Autumn School.
Autumn School 2026 focuses on fostering collaborative research. This retreat-style event will provide a relaxed and friendly environment where you'll:
- Build relationships across sectors
- Develop and practice skills for collaboration
- Gain experience of communicating across disciplinary boundaries
We welcome social scientists working on three main themes:
- Sustainable Production & Consumption
- Mitigating & Adapting to Climate Change
- People & Nature
Deadline for applications: Wednesday 8 July
Info
The Perils of Climate Catastrophism: A Call to Situate Crisis and Change
This advanced review by Karen Bickerstaff (ACCESS Leadership Team, University of Exeter) in WIREs Climate Change, reflects on, and problematises, the power and persistence of ideas about climate catastrophe, arguing that this politically and culturally dominant framing of imminent planetary devastation impedes and constrains action on climate change.
The author addresses the ways in which the problem of climate change has become synonymous with imaginaries of apocalyptic catastrophism and raises interconnected perils of the catastrophic gaze for climate action: the impossibility of solving a problem framed as a predominantly totalising whole-planet challenge; defeatism that displaces action to “total” and/or depoliticising solutions.
In response to these challenges, Karen Bickerstaff makes the case for a situated view of climate crisis and change – one that offers and embraces imaginaries that are fundamentally partial, located and positioned.
Leveraging Agency For Climate Change Mitigation
Climate debates often frame individual behaviour and systems change as distinct pathways to action. This comment in Nature Climate Change by Charlotte A Kukowski et al. (University of Cambridge) suggests that social change arises from individuals’ agency within their roles in societal systems, and that this agency should be actively leveraged to achieve meaningful climate change mitigation.
How can we disagree better over sustainable futures?
In April, ACCESS supported the Governing Sustainable Futures project alongside The British Academy and The Green Futures Network in organising a conference that brought together decision makers, community organisations, academics and many others to explore the challenge of 'How Can we Disagree Better over Sustainable Futures'.
This write-up from Governing Sustainable Futures lead Rebecca Sandover (University of Exeter) describes the aims of the event and the sessions led by academics and practitioners.
Sensing Climate: A collection of Creative Writing for Disability-Inclusive, Climate-Safe Futures by writers in and around Bristol
This collection offers a glimpse into the lives, emotions and messages of a creative community about disability, nature and a climate-impacted world.
The pieces were developed through a series of creative writing sessions held as part of Sensing Climate; a five-year, UKRI-funded research
project, led by Sarah Bell (ACCESS Leadership College Fellow, University of Exeter). The sessions were designed and facilitated by Tanvir Bush (Bath Spa University), an author, disabled activist and researcher.
The pieces invite us to hold together the many threads that weave through disability, nature and climate change: the emotions of tuning into a changing world and a changing body; understanding what it means to adapt to those changes; appreciating moments of joy in and with nature (human and non-human); and essential calls for care, action and re-imagined
futures.
Are you on the ACCESS Network database?
ACCESS aims to make social science expertise more accessible. We have created a publicly available, searchable database (The ACCESS Network) of social scientists and experts working in the fields of climate and environment.
Join the ACCESS Network to share your research and start making connections with other environmental social scientists.
