My research and teaching focuses on environmental politics, especially climate change politics. I am interested in the fundamental question of the challenges that dramatic environmental change poses to existing political institutions and structures, and what drives the responses of those systems to the unsustainability of the current world order. I have worked mostly on this in relation to climate change, and have worked principally on global climate governance (the UNFCCC, transnational governance initiatives), the political economy of climate (role of specific business sectors, the politics of carbon markets, generally how global capitalism shapes responses to climate change), and the cultural politics of climate change (the practices of daily life and the identities associated with them - automobility in particular).

I have taught at the universities of Stirling, Keele and Ottawa prior to coming to Manchester in 2016. I did my PhD on climate change politics at Essex University in 1990-1994.

PhD in Government, Essex University, 1994

BA Combined Honours (History and Poltiics), University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1990.

My work focuses on the political economy, the governance (at multiple scales), and the cultural politics of climate change. At the moment I am principally working on (a) the disruptive qualities of energy transitions, (b) the complicated relationship between attempts to depoliticize climate change to insulate it from political attack, and to repoliticize it in order to destabilize existing power relations that prevent further progress, and (c) the complexities of the politics of populist backlash against climate change action, especially in the UK. 

I am currently the deputy director of the Centre for Joined-Up Sustainability Transformations (JUST), based at Manchester. 

My book Automobile Politics: Ecology and Cultural Political Economy (Cambridge 2007) won the British International Studies Association's IPE Group Prize for the best book in International Political Economy in 2008.

I have been runner-up for the International Studies Association's Sprout prize for the best book in international environmental politics three times, for Automobile Politics, for Climate Capitalism (CUP, 2010, with Peter Newell), and for Transnational Climate Change Governance (CUP 2014, with Harriet Bulkeley and 8 others).

In 2010 I was selected as a Lead Author for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the chapter on 'International Cooperation: agreements and instruments' in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Panel, published in 2014. I also acted as a Contributing Author to the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report published in 2021.

I am a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Royal Society for Arts. 

Social Network Analysis; Critical Discourse Analysis.

I teach mostly courses on environmental politics (especially climate change), political economy, and global governance. I have also taught at various times in my career general courses in International Relations, Introduction to Political Science, research design courses, and a course on Social Network Analysis in politics.

I have supervised 27 PhD students to completion. A good number of these have gone on to academic careers in places as far afield as Australia and Sénégal, including two who are themselves now (Full) Professors. Others work the Canadian federal government, and one is a novelist.

I have also supervised 5 postdoctoral fellows to completion with three also at the moment. Four of these are now established academics, in Egypt, the US, and Canada. One works for a research NGO and the other is in the Canadian federal govenment.

I currently have 4 PhD students at Manchester.

I can only really offer to supervise students working on the aspects of climate change politics close to my existing research.