Prof Kate Burningham
Co-Director
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Kate Burningham is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey and Co-Director of CUSP. She is overseeing the CUSP theme on social and psychological understandings of the good life.
Kate is a sociologist who has been working on issues of environment and sustainability for over 20 years. Her research interests focus on the social construction of environmental issues, lay environmental knowledge, environmental inequalities and sustainable lifestyles.
Kate is Co-Director in CUSP, leading the societal understandings work theme, which explores the contested and situated nature of ordinary people’s visions of the good life and explores the role of materialism in delivering (and hindering) a sense of prosperity. It will explore how different philosophical understandings of justice and fairness enter lay narratives of the good life and how aspirations for prosperity and sustainability are negotiated in diverse places and circumstances.
Kate was recently a co-investigator in both the ESRC research group on Lifestyles, Values and Energy Consumption (RESOLVE) and the ESRC, Defra and Scottish Government funded Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group (SLRG) in which she led a qualitative longitudinal project Exploring Lifestyle Changes in Transition (ELiCiT).
Past funded research includes: for the ESRC, ‘Beyond NIMBY: A Multidisciplinary Investigation of Public Engagement with Renewable Energy Technologies’ and ‘Understanding Lay Environmental Knowledge in Industry’ ; for The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, ‘Vulnerability to heat and drought in the South West of England’ and ‘Rainforests are a long way from here: the environmental concerns of disadvantaged groups’; for the Environment Agency projects researching vulnerability to flooding, public responses to flood warnings, and environmental inequalities and a project for the ESRC, The Environment Agency and Hull City Council exploring children’s experiences of flooding in Hull. Kate supervises a number of PhD students located in the Department of Sociology and in CES.
Recent publications
Loukianov A, Burningham K and T Jackson 2022. The patterning of the discursive space in search for the #goodlife: A network analysis of the co-occurrence of Instagram hashtags. The Information Society, Oct 2022. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2022.2125604
Devine-Wright P, Whitmarsh L, Gatersleben B, O’Neill S, Hartley S, Burningham K, et al. (2022) Placing people at the heart of climate action. PLOS Clim 1(5): e0000035. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000035
Prendergast K, Hayward B, Aoyagi M, Burningham K, Hasan M M, Jackson T, Jha V, Kuroki L, Loukianov A, Mattar H, Schudel I, Venn S and Yoshida A 2021. Youth Attitudes and Participation in Climate Protest: An international cities comparison. In Frontiers in Political Science, Sept 2021. DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2021.696105
Burningham K and S Venn 2021. “Two quid, chicken and chips, done”: understanding what makes for young people’s sense of living well in the city through the lens of fast food consumption. In: Local Environment, Nov 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2021.2001797.
Venn S and K Burningham 2021. Managing the retention or divestment of material possessions in the transition to retirement: implications for sustainable consumption and for later-life wellbeing. Ageing & Society, First View. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X20001993
Prendergast K, Hayward B, Aoyagi M, Burningham K, Hasan M M, Jackson T, Jha V, Kuroki L, Loukianov A, Mattar H, Schudel I, Venn S and Yoshida A 2021. Youth Attitudes and Participation in Climate Protest: An international cities comparison. In Frontiers in Political Science, Sept 2021. DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2021.696105
Nissen S, Prendergast K, Aoyagi M et al 2020. Young people and environmental affordances in urban sustainable development: insights into transport and green and public space in seven cities. In: Sustainable Earth 3, 17. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42055-020-00039-w.
Loukianov A, Burningham K and T Jackson. Young people, good life narratives, and sustainable futures: the case of Instagram. Sustainable Earth, 3(11) (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s42055-020-00033-2
Burningham K, Venn S, Hayward B, Nissen S, Aoyagi M, Hasan MM, Jackson T, Jha V, Mattar H, Schudel I & A Yoshida 2019. Ethics in context: essential flexibility in an international photo-elicitation project with children and young people, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2019.1672282.
Loukianov A, Burningham K & T Jackson 2019. Living the Good Life on Instagram: An exploration of lay understanding of what it means to live well. Journal of Consumer Ethics.
Burningham, K and S Venn 2017. Moments of Change—Are lifecourse transitions opportunities for moving to more sustainable consumption?. CUSP Working Paper no 7. Guildford: Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity.
Burningham K and S Venn 2017. Are lifecourse transitions opportunities for moving to more sustainable consumption?, In: Journal of Consumer Culture.
Burningham K and S Venn 2017. Understanding and Practising Sustainable Consumption in Early Motherhood, In: Journal of Consumer Ethics, 1(2).
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