Duncan McLaren

Duncan McLaren researches the politics and environmental justice implications of environmental technologies and imaginaries such as climate engineering, carbon removal, smart cities and the circular economy. As a Professor in Practice, he works to make academic research more accessible and useful to activists and campaigners for environmental justice.

McLaren has written widely on these and other topics in both scholarly and popular forms. He was previously an advisor to the Virgin Earth Challenge, for the development of a commercially viable, scalable and sustainable form of carbon removal. He has advised on several research projects on energy, climate and geoengineering topics, and has served on both the research Councils’ Energy Programme Advisory Council and the UK Government’s Energy Research Partnership.

Previously, he worked for many years in environmental research and advocacy, most recently as Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland from 2003 until 2011, where he was influential in the adoption of world leading climate change legislation by the Scottish Parliament.