Leslie Mabon

I'm a Lecturer in Environmental Systems in the School of Engineering and Innovation at the Open University. I am an Associate Member of the First Minister's Environmental Council in Scotland, and am a Future Earth Coasts Fellow as well as a former European Crucible participant. I'm also on the Editorial Board for the journal Sustainability Science.

The big question I’m interested in is: whose knowledge counts – and why – within environmental management and policy? I explore these issues through three sub-areas of research:

(a) climate change adaptation governance at the city or regional scale, especially the integration of equity and justice concerns within techncially-led processes for climate risk reduction;

(b) risk, environmental infrastructure and the coastal and marine environment. I am especially interested in how environmental change may impact upon socially and culturally meaningful activities, and what the effects of this may be;

(c) ‘just transitions’ for high-emitting and carbon-intensive regions, where climate imperatives may have to be balanced with local concerns over employment and economic sustainability.

My research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, the Wellcome Trust, the Japan Foundation, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh among others. Outputs from my work on environmental policy and governance have been published in journals including Landscape and Urban Planning, Global Environmental Change, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and World Development.

I'm also a big fan of football, and support Raith Rovers in Scotland. My enthusiasm for football has recently led me to expand my research interests into understanding what climate change means for football.