Jefim Vogel

I am a PhD researcher in ecological economics at the Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (University of Leeds: School of Earth and Environment) and part of the Living Well Within Limits (LiLi) project as well as member of the Economics and Policy for Sustainability and Energy and Climate Change Mitigation working groups. My research is motivated by the wish to contribute to creating sustainable, just, and flourishing societies that enable everyone to live a good life.

I completed a BSc in Physics of the Earth System at Kiel University and an MSc in Climate Dynamics (Meteorology and Oceanography) at University of Bergen, before transitioning to the field of ecological economics for my PhD, to study the interlinked issues of ecological sustainability, human well-being, social justice and ‘development’ in their environmental, economic, social, and political dimensions.

My key interest is to understand which processes, structures, and ideologies drive or sustain unsustainable, unjust and harmful development, and how societies, provisioning systems and the broader political-economic paradigm would have to change to become sustainable and just and meet everybody’s basic needs.

I engage in teaching as seminar leader in both undergraduate and Master level modules in ecological economics (‘Introduction to Ecological Economics’, ‘Tools and Techniques in Ecological Economics’, and ‘Economics and Sustainability’) at the University of Leeds.

Research interests
In my PhD, I take a systemic perspective to analyse how physical, social, economic and political factors and systems shape both environmental impacts and social outcomes of economic and non-economic provisioning activities. Specifically, I assess how targeted changes in provisioning systems could enable societies to meet everybody’s basic needs at sustainable levels of biophysical resource use. My research employs an interdisciplinary approach, conceptualising provisioning systems in terms of a wide range of physical, geographic, economic, social, and political factors across the spheres of production, consumption, and societal organisation. Using statistical cross-country analysis and simple modelling, I characterise the role of provisioning systems as intermediaries between biophysical resource use (energy use, CO2 emissions) and basic needs satisfaction, and explore the effects of potential provisioning systems changes to identify levers for low-carbon well-being for a wide range of countries.

Further research interests:
Human well-being, basic needs, community-led needs satisfaction
Climate justice, environmental justice and social justice
Climate mitigation, decarbonisation and low-carbon economy
Social provisioning and provisioning systems
Heterodox economics and political economy
Degrowth and post-growth
Societal transformation and system change
Sufficiency
Inequality
Power
Post-development and decolonisation
Sustainable cities
Low-carbon transport systems
Climate impact of aviation
Democracy, participation and citizens' assemblies
Climate dynamics
Climate impacts
Societal response to ecological disruption
Risks of societal collapse