Dr Amy Burnett
Research Fellow
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Amy is an interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner with a background in political science, international development, environmental management and planning. As a researcher, her work focuses on the role of civil society groups and local government in promoting innovative and sustainable development in the context of planning, placemaking and place-based identities, political systems and broader policy influence, organisational design, and incentivising action on climate and biodiversity issues.
Dr Amy Burnett is a Research Fellow at the at Middlesex University’s Centre for Enterprise, Environment and Development Research (CEEDR). Currently, she is working on exploring the monitoring and evaluation of biodiversity and net-zero in small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) and how financial systems can reflect the value of nature and incentivise system changes across different sectors, including agri-food and farming. Her work also examines lifecourse transitions and how these are supported by SMEs, reflecting the notion of good work as part of a major UKRI/ESRC-funded project on the transition to parenthood.
Amy was an ESRC-funded post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Surrey’s Centre of Environment and Sustainability (CES), mentored by Prof Kate Burningham (CUSP) and Dr. Richard Nunes (University of Reading). Through her fellowship, she furthered work in her PhD on the role of independent (non-party-political) politics to advance sustainability transitions through low-carbon development and planning, contributing to CUSP’s research theme Political and Organisational Dimensions of Sustainable Prosperity. This included an event on political innovations for sustainable planning and placemaking, a blog on the event can be accessed on the CUSP blog page.
She also recently completed a project funded by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) on Rural Planning, focusing on how Brexit, Climate Change and COVID-19 are affecting the dynamics of planning and placement in the UK and Ireland when she was a Research Fellow at the Ebenezer Howard School of Planning at the University of Hertfordshire and will be part of an editorial team of leading planning scholars to publish the findings in a forthcoming edited book.
Amy manages her own consultancy, Development in Transition (DinT) which supports the measurement and change in community-led planning, placemaking and regenerative development.
Publications
Amy’s publications focus on incentives for environmental citizenship, mechanisms for sustainability, low-carbon planning, independent politics and the politics of transition:
- Burnett, A. (2022) Securing a regenerative and just planning system. Town and Country Planning. April/May 2022. Vol 91, issue 2, pp.123-8.
- Burnett, A. and Nunes, R. (2021) Flatpack democracy: Power and politics at the boundaries of transition. Environmental Policy and Governance. 2021; 31: 223– 236. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.1931
- Bradley, Q, Burnett, A, Sparling, W (2017) Neighbourhood Planning and the Spatial Practices of Localism. Neighbourhood Planning: Power to the People? Policy Press.
- Merritt*, A and Stubbs, T (2012) Complementing the Local and the Global: promoting sustainability action through linked local-level formal sustainability funding mechanisms. Public Administration and Development. Volume 32, Issue 3, pp. 278-291. Rio+20 special edition: August 2012.
- Merritt, A and Stubbs, T (2012) Incentives to Promote Green Citizenship in UK Transition Towns. Development, Issue 55, pp. 96-103. Rio+20 special edition: March 2012.
* née Merritt
