Hannah Charles

I am in the final stage of my PhD project which focuses on the low carbon transformation in social housing. My project is funded by the ESRC, and I am part of the NWSSDTP as a CASE student. My CASE (non-academic) partner is an anonymous social housing provider. 

My data collection focussed on a case study social housing provider undertaking a large-scale retrofit project in the North West of England. Using the case study, I have drawn links to the political context that retrofit is under, and have examined the impact of neoliberalism and austerity on social housing and decarbonisation. I am primarily interested in energy access issues, social and political factors which impact vulnerability and access to retrofit technologies.

My PhD uses journal format, with one paper published in Energy Research and Social Science, one paper under review in Area, and one submitted to Buildings & Cities special issue on retrofit. 

My methods are based on qualitative data, analysed using inductive thematic analysis. I undertook interviews with social housing residents, did expert interviews, and carried out and organisational ethnography of a social housing retrofit team.

My supervisory team includes Stefan Bouzarovski as primary supervisor, with Rob Bellamy and Ally Gormally-Sutton supporting the supervision team. I am a member of the Society and Environment Research Group (SERG) and have been a student representative for the North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership (NWSSDTP).

Alongside my PhD research, I have worked as a research assistant on the LENS project - organising meetings, carrying out interviews, and doing a literature review for the team.

I have taught on the following modules:

Energy Society and Space seminars - supporting Stefan Bouzarovski and Saska Petrova to undertake seminars for third-year undergraduate students.

Geography Tutorials - working closely with first-year undergraduate students to gain research skills.

Social and Cultural Geographies seminars - working with Yawei Zhao and Amy Barron to deliver seminars for second-year undergraduate geographers on social and cultural geographies. 

Researching Manchester fieldtrips and computer support sessions (three times) - this first-year undergraduate course teaches various geography skills to students, including GIS, secondary data analysis, observation, and poster development.

I lectured for the modules: 

Energy, Society and Space - third year undergraudate module where I presented my research as a guest lecture. 

Energy in the City - master's module where I presented my research as a guest lecture.

Doing Environmental Research - myself and 2 colleagues presented as a 'meet the veterans' session where we shared some insights on how to undertake research effectively, and discussed some common pitfalls to the master's students. 

I marked on these modules: 

Introducing Human Geographies (twice)

Key Ideas in Geography marking (twice)

Geographies of Globalisation marking