News
Spotlight on the latest news from across the Institute.
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Workshop on Sustainable Investment and the Politics of Materiality
6 Jun 2025
We invite expressions of interest (EoIs) in participating in a workshop on ‘Sustainable Investment and the politics of materiality’, which will ...
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Rethinking Sustainability: A Collective Call to Action at The University of Manchester
28 May 2025
The ‘Getting Serious About Sustainability: Research, Education and Advocacy’ symposium, held from 22–23 May 2025, was the first major event ...
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Climate-related risks to central bank independence: the de-politicisation and re-politicisation of the Bank of England in the transition to net zero
10 Dec 2024
Faced with ever-growing climate-related financial risks, the role of central banks in climate governance has intensified debates surrounding central ...
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New book on corporate power, grassroots movements and the sharing economy
8 Nov 2024
Luke Yates' new book, Platform Politics: Corporate Power, Grassroots Movements and the Sharing Economy, investigates the ‘sharing economy’, ...
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The Climate-Changing Context of Inflation: Fossilflation, Climateflation, and the Environmental Politics of Green Central Banks
15 Oct 2024
In this forum, I seek to demonstrate how the growing confluence of climate change and inflation offers a fruitful research agenda for environmental ...
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Modern secondhand clothes are often considered ‘dirty’ but vintage garments aren’t – certain assumptions limit sustainable fashion
23 Sep 2024
Written by Tetyana Solovey As a teenager in post-USSR Ukraine, I vividly remember visiting secondhand clothes shops. For the elderly, the biggest ...
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A league made in the economy’s image: destabilised stability and the English Premier League’s Minsky moment
2 Jul 2024
The English Premier League (EPL) has drawn the attention of scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds in recent years, yet its underlying ...
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We need more network capacity! But why do we get it? Infrastructural refraction and the contingencies of network growth and energy transitions
28 Jun 2024
It is accepted that electricity networks need to grow in scale and scope to facilitate decarbonisation. It is also accepted that infrastructural ...
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Navigating the Backlash: The Future of British Climate Strategy
20 Jun 2024
How is British politics changing in ways that affect the pursuit of ambitious climate action? In this report, based on a workshop of academic ...
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New book explores changes in everyday eating habits
19 Jun 2024
In his new book, Everyday Eating: Food, Taste and Trends in Britain since the 1950s Alan Warde explores how eating habits have changed in recent ...
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A Very British industrial policy: Green finance and the City-Bank-Treasury control of Net Zero
6 Jun 2024
In 2017, the UK’s Industrial Strategy was thought to have marked an unconventional moment in British politics, as the state began to explicitly ...
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Workshop on Green energy transitions and global disruption: The (un)just transition to Net Zero
23 Apr 2024
The goal of the workshop is to build conversations among researchers about the political economy of energy transitions, focused on the question of ...
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What does a ‘metal intensive’ future entail?
18 Mar 2024
Critical metals, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese, are key to the path towards net zero. The UK Government released their ...
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Why we need connected strategies for net zero and levelling up
7 Feb 2024
The Government’s Net Zero Strategy (2022) calls for more attention to community-based action to meet ambitious targets. Similarly, the ...
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Congratulations to Dr Helen Holmes, the newly appointed Deputy Director of Sustainable Futures from January 2024
5 Jan 2024
Dr Helen Holmes, current Inclusive and Prosperous Challenge Lead for Sustainable Futures and Senior Lecturer in Sociology, has been newly appointed ...
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The big business of sustainable food production and consumption: Exploring the transition to alternative proteins
27 Nov 2023
Animal agriculture is responsible for considerable environmental burden, and a key contributor to climate change. Meat alternatives are increasingly ...
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New Master’s Programme at The University of Manchester Takes a Fresh Approach to Tackling Climate Change
23 Nov 2023
A new postgraduate course addressing the global environmental crisis and the challenges of building sustainable societies has been launched by The ...
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Sustainable consumption by product substitution? An exploration of the appropriation of plant-based ‘mylk’ in everyday life
25 Oct 2023
Many mainstream visions of sustainable societies assume that ‘green’ products will come to replace existing ones, reducing the footprint of ...
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‘Facilitating the transition to net zero’ and institutional change in the Bank of England: Perceptions of the environmental mandate and its policy implications within the British state
25 Oct 2023
The role of central banks in perpetuating and tackling the economic patterns associated with climate change has increasingly been subject to academic...
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The Rise of Anti-Net Zero Populism in the UK: Comparing Rhetorical Strategies for Climate Policy Dismantling
30 Aug 2023
This article explores a backlash against the net zero greenhouse gas emissions target within the UK. It introduces the term “anti-net zero ...
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Towards new ecologies of automation: Robotics and the re-engineering of nature
3 Aug 2023
Written by Andrew Lockhart, Simon Marvin and Aidan While Climate/ecological breakdown and automation are two defining challenges of the current era, ...
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The Materiality of Nothing: Exploring Our Everyday Relationships with Objects Absent and Present
21 Jul 2023
The Materiality of Nothing explores the invisible, intangible and transient materials and objects of everyday life and the relationships we have with...
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The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics: ‘Continuity and change in carbon market politics’
21 Jul 2023
The complexities and scope of environmental issues have not only outpaced the capacities and responsiveness of traditional political actors but also ...
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How platform businesses mobilize their users and allies: Corporate grassroots lobbying and the Airbnb ‘movement’ for deregulation
10 Jul 2023
This article analyses and theorizes the political strategies of businesses in the new digital ‘platform’ economy. Airbnb, Uber and meal delivery ...
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