Visiting researchers
We are proud to host short and long-term visitors who contribute to intellectual life at the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) and to extending our research interests.
We have an active, interdisciplinary, and friendly research environment and good links with scholars in other departments and institutes at the University.
We welcome expressions of interest in visiting the SCI.
Funding opportunities are available for the Simon and Hallsworth Visiting Professorships and the British Academy Visiting Fellowships.
For more information about visiting opportunities, please contact Mat Paterson.
Past visitors
From December 2023 to December 2024, we hosted Dr Xingju Zhong, an Associate Professor at Chongqing University, China, and Deputy Director of the Department of Public Human Resources and Social Security. She holds a PhD in Sociology from Renmin University of China and specialises in environmental organizations, public opinion on environmental issues, social policy, and qualitative research methods.
Hosted by Professor Alison Browne (Geography Department), Dr Zhong worked on a project exploring green lifestyle transformations in rural and urban areas, with a focus on community-based practices. She engaged with SCI researchers throughout her visit and contributed to interdisciplinary discussions on sustainability.
On November 6th 2024, we hosted Ahmad Hariza Bin Hashim at the SCI. Ahmad is based at Universiti Putra Malaysia in Penang, where he convenes a group of researchers working on sustainability and consumption. He was visiting with Professor Matthew Paterson (Politics Department), and the purpose of his visit was to connect with SCI as a similarly focused research community and to explore how his currently informal group might develop into a more established institute.
While at SCI, Ahmad engaged in discussions with staff and expressed particular interest in meeting with our PhD students. He met with researchers to hear about their work and exchange ideas on shared themes in sustainability research. Ahmad's visit contributed to strengthening international networks and exploring opportunities for collaboration around sustainability and consumption.
From May-September 2024, we hosted Aysha Batool in the SCI. Aysha is a PhD scholar in Business Administration, with a major in Marketing, at Government College University Faisalabad, Pakistan. Aysha is also employed as a research analyst in the Office of Fair Trade at the Competition Commission of Pakistan. Aysha was visiting with SCI associate Paul Tobin (Politics Department).
Throughout her visit, Aysha undertook research interviews and attended many SCI events including our summer party and regular seminars and forums. Aysha also completed a summer course with Methods@Manchester.
In January-March 2023, we hosted, along with the Politics Department, Professor Jacqueline Best, as a Hallsworth Visiting Professor.
Professor Best is a specialist on finance and global political economy, and in that context, we organised a half-day workshop on ‘Climate finance and central banking in the new inflationary context’.
This brought together specialists on central banking in combination with those on climate finance to think about the implications and dynamics of the increasing regulatory activity by central banks regarding climate change, and how that has been affected by the crises of COVID, inflation, and the Ukraine war.
Participants included Eric Helleiner, Sarah Bracking, Paul Langley, John Morris, as well as several colleagues from Manchester. A blog post summarising our discussions is here, and it has led to ongoing conversations and research activity around this theme among the participants.
In May 2021 we hosted David Schlosberg as a virtual visiting professor at SCI. In the course of this two-week ‘visit’ we held four events.
- David gave the first SCI annual lecture, entitled ‘Material participation and sustainable practice’, which explored the idea of - and demand for - political participation that is just, prefigurative, sustainable, and based on material actions. What kind of politics is guerrilla gardening or installing community batteries? While there is a long history of material participation in social movements, recent movements incorporate a shift in relations between human and nonhuman as a political act.
- We also held a seminar entitled ‘That’s how the light gets in: In conversation with Sherilyn MacGregor and David Schlosberg’. This was a discussion based on an article by Sherilyn called ‘making matter great again’, which argued that much of the work on ‘sustainable materialism’, including David’s book with Luke Craven of that title, neglected the ecofeminist roots of this interest in everyday material practices and politics. View the conversation.
- David also held a ‘master class’ on ‘from environmental to multispecies justice’ with PhD students and early career researchers at Manchester.
- We also held a meeting to discuss potential future collaborations between scholars at the SCI and the Sydney Environment Institute, where David is the director, and it was clear there are various possible areas of converging interests we will keep exploring.
- Xiaofang Zhan
- Andrew Bollinger
- Igor Nikolic
- Jaco Quist
- Itay Greenspan
- Femida Handy
- Rachel Trajber
- Sacha Manik
- Dr Liu Fei
- Riie Heikkila
- Dr Jordi López-Sintas
- Terhi-Anna Wilska
- Nicklas Neuman
- Lidewij Tummers
- Mia Tammelin
- Nicklas Neuman
- Tullia Jack
- Gregor Kungl
- Jo Lindsay
- Mette Jacobsen
- Senja Laakso