Marie Claire Brisbois

Marie Claire Brisbois is a Lecturer in Energy Policy at SPRU, and Co-Director of the Sussex Energy Group. Her work examines questions of power, politics and influence in energy, water and climate governance contexts. She also works on broader issues of social change and public participation in low carbon transitions.

Marie Claire leads a work package for the H2020 CINTRAN (Carbon Intensive Regions in Transition - Unravelling the Challenges of Structural Change) project examining the coping strategies of people experiencing direct impacts of coal phase outs, and how elite power plays out in these contexts. She is also working on relational approaches to home energy retrofit policies through the UKERC 'Whole Person - Whole Place' energy solutions for net-zero neighbourhoods Project. Through work on the JPI Solstice ROLES (Responsive Organising for Low Emission Societies) project, she is working on examining the justice implications of digitalisation in relation to rooftop solar. Through the UKERC (UK Energy Research Centre), she is working on "Local Green New Deals: a sustainable and equitable path for post Covid-19 recovery" to examine values, metrics and indicators for more sustainable post-Covid-19 communities. Her other research activities include participatory and collaborative environmental governance, the military and security implications of energy transitions, and science communications through both citizen science and open data.

In the past, Marie Claire held a Mitacs Canadian Science Policy Fellowship examining the optimisation of scientific knowledge within environmental assessments at Natural Resources Canada. She also held a position as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

In addition to her work in politics and governance, Marie Claire has a Master’s degree in Biological Engineering from Dalhousie University that focused on stream ecosystem health. She has consulted on technical and policy-level water and climate issues in Latin America and Canada. She also has extensive experience in teaching, community building and facilitation through work with Waterlution, the Sierra Club of Canada, and the University of Waterloo.