I am a Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Research Director of the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) and founding Co-Editor of the journal Consumption and Society. 

My work falls into two broad categories: firstly, a concern with the unsustainability of our consumer societies, and secondly, an interest in how to understand social change. Much of my work has sought to develop theories of practice to understand processes of social and cultural change. In recent years my research focus has been on how understandings of the future shape social change.  

I am a member of the European Sociological Association Consumption Research Network, British Sociological Association Consumption Study Group, SCORAI Europe (Sustainable Consumption and Action Research Initiative), and the Future Earth Systems of Sustainable Consumption and Production Knowledge-Action Network.

I joined the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) and Department of Sociology as a PhD student in 2008. Following my PhD I joined the SCI as a Research Associate and subsequently Research Fellow. In 2019 I became a Lecturer in Sociology. Prior to academic work, I was Co-editor of Ethical Consumer magazine and a researcher at the Ethical Consumer Research Association, and worked freelance as a copywriter and researcher, chiefly in sustainability communications. I did my first degree in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex, and an MA in Cultural Studies at Lancaster University.    

Specific research interests:

• sociology of consumption, with a particular interest in transitions towards more environmentally sustainable and socially just forms of consumption
• theories of social action and social change, particularly theories of practice
• sociology of the future
• cultural sociology, with a particular interest in how widespread cultural understandings shape, and are shaped by, social change

Research Projects

“IMAGINE: Contested Futures of Sustainability" P.I. Nina Heidenstrøm, Oslo Metropolitan University (01/12/2021 – 31/12/24)

I lead an integrative work package on this major international collaboration, funded by the Norwegian Research Council. IMAGINE set out to research the power of cultural imaginaries of sustainable futures in the fields of food consumption, clothing and transport. You can read more about the project here: https://imagine.oslomet.no/the-project/

As part of the project I have co-organised a series of project workshops,  and presented widely on the emerging theoretical framework of the project. I am currently co-editing a Special Issue of project papers for publication in the journal Consumption and Society in September 2026.

“Imagined Futures of Consumption” (PI, ESRC ‘New investigators’ Grant’ ES/R007942/1) (01/09/2018-28/02/2022).

Imagined futures of consumption have played an important role in economic and political imaginaries since the end of the Second World War, critically in the form of the promise of ‘prosperity for all’ realised through mass consumption in the consumer society. Today, the imagined future of consumer society is fundamentally challenged, opening up cultural and social space for competing imagined futures of consumption. Within this social and political-economic context the project sought to explore the role of imagined futures of consumption in processes of social and political contestation and legitimation, and how such imaginaries shape, and are shaped by, social processes. The core empirical component of the project explored lay expectations of the future of consumption through collaboration with the Mass Observation Archive Directive (Ehgartner and Welch, 2024). I have presented widely on the project, including a keynote lecture to the European Sociological Association Consumption Research Network conference in Olso, 2022. I am currently writing a monograph drawing on the project.

Theories of Practice

Much of my work has sought to address lacunae that can be identified in theories of practice (Warde, Welch and Paddock, 2017; Welch and Warde 2015; Welch, Halkier and Keller, 2020). One strand of this work has addressed the implications of practice theory for interventions into behavioural change, particularly in relation to sustainable consumption (Spurling, McMeekin, Shove, Southerton and Welch, 2013; Welch, 2017; Welch and Southerton, 2019). In another strand of work I have sought to build social theory on Schatzki’s (1996, 2002) social ontology of practice. Here I have addressed how to conceptualise within a practice theoretical framework: widely shared cultural understandings (Welch and Warde, 2017); configurations of multiple practices and discourses or “teleoaffective formations” (Welch, 2020); collective actors and collective activity (Welch and Yates, 2018, 2022); and lastly, projectivity towards the future (Welch, Mandich and Keller, 2020).

Previous Research Projects

‘Households, Retailers and Food Waste Transitions’ (Research Associate, ESRC project ES/L00514X/1, P.I. Prof. David Evans, 2014-2016.

The project explored how collective actors in the UK framed, responded to and interpreted the issue of food waste and sought to intervene in debates around the ‘responsibilisation of the consumer’ in sustainable consumption (Evans, Welch & Swaffield, 2017, 2018; Swaffield, Evans & Welch, 2018; Welch, Swaffield & Evans, 2018).

"Understanding the Commercial Field of Sustainability Communications"

My PhD research (2008-2013), supervised by Alan Warde and Dale Southerton (Sociology, University of Manchester) addressed the formation and development of the commercial field of sustainability communications, and its significance for cultural intermediation of sustainable consumption and corporate sustainability. 

Expert Reviewer FORMAS, Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (March 2023 – current)

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts: Invited in 2008 to become a fellow “in recognition of…work in the development of ethical consumerism” 

Due to existing commitments I will not be accepting new PhD students until 2027. I currently supervise six PhD students:

Wanghu Liu (Sociology) "How Acts of Boycott Become Embedded in Everyday Life"

Guyeon Kang (Sociology) "Understanding the roles of culinary intermediary organizations in the transition towards environmental sustainability in the eating out trade"

Topo Mokokwane (Sociology) “The Nexus of Culture and Ecology in Sustainability: A Theory of the Linguistic Construction of Worldview and its Relationship to Modern Environmental Issues”

Linqing Xia (Sociology) “Sustainable Consumption in China’s Consumer Culture”

Ryan Harries (Sociology) “The Multiple Ontologies of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy”

Sam Toscano (Politics) ““Investigating the sustainability communications of corporate climate pacts: governmentality and the (re)structuring of environmental action.”