Rebecca Sale
- Email: ee21res@leeds.ac.uk
- Thesis title: Investigating how social relations shape the experience of indoor air in the lives of families with children living in energy poverty
- Supervisors: Dr Jim McQuaid , Professor Lucie Middlemiss, Professor Catherine Noakes, Dr Marco-Felipe King
Profile
I am in the third year of my PhD, funded by EPSRC, in the Sustainability Research Institute at the School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability.
In my research, I am interested in understanding how families with children manage and experience indoor air and temperature extremes (overheating or cold) in their homes when living in energy poverty.
Households living in energy poverty might struggle to manage indoor air due to competing demands, forcing them to make trade-offs such as reducing ventilation to retain warmth in the home, or avoiding using mechanical ventilation or extractor fans to save money. Cold, under-heated homes are also vulnerable to damp and mould. Children are among the most vulnerable to the effects of both poor indoor air quality and energy poverty, yet their lived experience is under-researched.
Indoor air research is dominated by quantitative methods. My research takes a hybrid approach to indoor air, which treats air not as a purely physical matter, but something that is entangled with sociocultural meaning (Cupples, 2009; Booker et al., 2023). I am interested in using relational approaches (Hargreaves and Middlemiss, 2020; Middlemiss et al., 2024), to investigate how children’s experiences of indoor air are shaped by relationships with their family, friends, and their own identity.
Before this PhD, I studied a Masters in Sustainable Cities at the University of Leeds. My Masters thesis explored the recruitment of households living in energy poverty for energy poverty research, where I investigated the barriers and challenges to recruitment and identified the most appropriate methods for research. I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Exeter, achieving a first in BSc Geography with Applied GIS.
Research interests
- Energy poverty
- Indoor air quality
- Hybrid approaches to indoor air
- Social practices
- Social relations
- Families and children
- Creative methods
Qualifications
- MSc Sustainable Cities (Distinction)
- BSc Geography with Applied GIS (First Class)
Research groups and institutes
- Social and Political Dimensions of Sustainability