Dr Lucie Middlemiss

Profile

I joined the School of Earth and Environment in 2004 as a Teaching and Research Fellow, and completed my PhD in the School in 2009. I became a Lecturer in Sustainability in 2009, and an Associate Professor in Sustainability in 2017. Since September 2017 I am Co-director of the Sustainability Research Institute. Before I joined the school I did an MSc in Environmental Management at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. I have also worked in corporate communications at Wolters Kluwer, as a consultant for AEA Technology Environment, and briefly as a volunteer at Greenpeace International.

Responsibilities

• Co-Director Sustainability Research Institute

Research interests

I am interested in the boundary between social and environmental issues. That means that I want to know how environmental problems and policy affect people, and how people can in turn affect environmental problems. I have disciplinary roots in sociology, and take a critical approach to sustainability. This includes an increasing engagement with social theory. I am intrigued by the substantial social changes observed by social theorists since the second world war, and intent on exploring how these might have an impact on sustainability debates.

The topics I am interested in include sustainable consumption, sustainable communities, environmental justice and energy poverty. My PhD evaluated the potential for community groups to influence their members to take on sustainable practices. Further work has looked at the intersection between environment and poverty, in a series of projects on energy poverty. I have recently written the first textbook on sustainable consumption.

I supervise four PhD students: David Wingate, Harriet Thew, Imogen Rattle, and Yael Arbell. I have also recently hosted students from Denmark and Brazil.

Previous students: Yana Manyukhina, Georgios Zampas, Sarah Bradbury.

I have been external examiner for six PhD examinations, and internal examiner for two since 2012.

<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>

Student education

I teach on BSc Sustainability and Environmental Management, BA Environment and Business and MSc Sustainability courses. I also contribute to the following modules:

• Research in Environmental Social Sciences
• Sustainable Consumption (with the masters variant)

Sustainable Consumption is the module that relates most closely to my research, and the one I get the most excited about! I wrote the first textbook on Sustainable Consumption; Key Issues, released in 2018 published by Routledge/Taylor and Francis, (discount code is FLR40). I regularly supervise dissertations on sustainable consumption, sustainable communities and energy poverty topics.

Research groups and institutes

• Social and Political Dimensions of Sustainability
• Energy and Climate Change Mitigation
• Sustainability Research Institute

Current postgraduate researchers

• Imogen Rattle
• David Wingate

<h4>Postgraduate research opportunities</h4> <p>We welcome enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from all around the world who are interested in PhD study. Our <a href="https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/research-opportunities">research opportunities</a> allow you to search for projects and scholarships.</p>

• Understanding (sustainable) consumption through Mass Observation
• Understanding the lived experience of energy poverty across nations