Robbie Watt

My research is about the politics of climate change. I research how patterns of globalisation and development affect climate governance, focusing especially on the phenomena of carbon markets. I am part of the Global Political Economy research cluster and I participate in the Environmental Politics Group.

In 2023/24, I will be teaching MA modules on The Politics of Global Climate Change, Critical Environmental Politics, and The Politics of Money and Finance, plus the second year undergraduate module Environmental Politics. I am the Programme Director for the MA in International Political Economy and the Deputy Undergraduate Dissertation Tutor. I am available to supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

My previous degrees include an an Honours degree in Politics and Philosophy from the University of Glasgow (2010) and an MSc in Climate Change and Development from the University of Sussex (2011). I worked as a Research Assistant at the Institute of Development Studies, on issues of low carbon and climate resilient development, before joining the University of Manchester to begin a PhD in 2012. I completed my PhD at the Global Development Institute in 2016 with funding from the Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Value. My doctoral research examined the cultural political economy of carbon markets, involving fieldwork in Europe and India. I began working as a Lecturer in Politics in 2017. I have also worked part-time in the Climate Policy team at the European University Institute’s School of Transnational Governance during 2020-21. 

My research has focused on the tensions and contradictions associated with carbon offsetting as a problematic feature of international responses to the climate crisis. I am particularly interested in how carbon trading and its cultural dynamics connect with the policy processes of neoliberal climate governance. I work with critical theory, including psychoanalytic approaches to the study of politics. I am currently researching links between carbon trading and crypto-currency initiatives.