Dr Karen Lucas is Professor of Human Geography and Director of Research in the Department of Geography within the School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED).  She is deputy director of the Manchester Urban Institute  and leads its Transport and Mobilities research group. She has 25+ years’ experience of delivering social research into practice in transport, employing a variety of mixed methods approaches to issues of mobility, accessibility and social justice.

Karen is a world-leading expert on transport and social justice in the Global North and South.  She is currently working on developing transport poverty index for the European Commission's DG Employment and recently devised a new integrated methodology for the social assessment of road projects for National Highways.  She previously undertook similar assessments of the A465 bypass project for the Welsh Government and of the Lower Thames Crossing project for the Department of Transport. She is director of the International Network for Transport and Accessibility in Low Income Communities (INTALInC)., which is a global network of academics, policymakers, NGOs and frontline agencies to promote transport justice in Global South cities.

Karen also researches issue of energy poverty and environmental justice in the UK context, currently leading the High-End Energy Consumers project https://www.creds.ac.uk/high-energy-consumers/ for the Centre for Research of Energy Demand Systems (CREDS), which is funded by UK Research and Innovation.

She is a member of the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Transport Geography, Springer's Transportation journal and Urban Book Series.

Karen was recently appointed as Professor of Human Geography SEED in July 2020. 

From 2013-2020, she was Professor of Transport and Social Analysis at the Institute for transport Studies and co-director of the Leeds social science Institute at the University  of Leeds

She was previously a Senior Research Fellow at the Transport Studies Unit (TSU), University of Oxford, where she also held a Senior Research Fellowship at Kellogg College. She previously worked for 11 years as a senior research fellow at the Transport Studies Group, University of Westminster, where I was also research coordinator for the Centre for Sustainable Development.

1. Transport poverty and social disadvantage

1. International Network for Transport and accessibility in Low Income Communities
2. Greener Jourrneys:: make the switch to bus and coach
3. Modelling the relationships between transport poverty and social disadvantage
4. Transport and Social Exclusion: New Directions and National Comparisons (TranSENDaNC)
5. Transport and accessibility in low income communities in the Recife Metropolitan Region

2. Public participation and knowledge brokerage

1. What Works for Local Economic Growth: Transport
2. EU COST Action on Transport Equity Assessment 
3. Social Impacts and Equity issues in Transport Workshop Series

 3.      Social and Distributional Impact Assessment

1. Government office for Science Foresight on Transport: Accessibility and Inclusion Review
2. Lower Thames Crossing for Highways England
3. A465 road bypass project in South Wales for Welsh Government
4. Assessing the Social Distributional Impacts of Climate Change Polices for Transport for Department for Transport
5. Merseytravel Neighbourhood Travel Team Evaluation Study

 4.      Car dependence  

1. t) ERES - Energy-related economic stress – (transport, housing and fuel poverty) 
2. Evaluating the effectiveness, impacts and success of DECC-funded low carbon communities on localised energy behaviours
3. RAC Foundation study of the Car In British Society

• UG modules for BA Human Geography
• Masters' Dissertation Supervisor
• Short course coordinator for CPD training

I am happy to consider the supervision of research projects in a range of areas related to the mobility and accessibility inequalities, energy and climate justice, and the experiences of vulnerable population groups and communities.  I am interested in the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods and blended approaches.