Brunel University

Graduate Student, Social Sciences

Other Affiliations: Victoria University of Wellington, School of Social and Cultural Studies

Thesis Title: Climate change, moral panic and civilisation: On the development of climate change as a social problem

About

I am currently in the final stages of completing my PhD at Brunel University, London. Using interviews and historical documentary analysis, my PhD research develops a long-term approach to understanding the development of global warming as a perceived social problem. Bringing together the concept of moral panic with Norbert Elias’s theory of civilising and decivilising processes, this research explores how and to what extent understandings about, and the governance of, anthropogenic climate change have developed (assessing past and current forms of regulation); how climate change interventions might or ought to develop in the future; how some people come to be involved in environmental ‘activism’ and how others do not. The research also critically assesses the development and usage of the concept of moral panic – a sociology of the sociology of moral panic.

I have also recently commenced preliminary research for a comparative study on alcohol use and other forms of consumption that have come to be problematised. Combining figurational and moral panic approaches, the project uses the following methods: interviews, visual methods, historical documentary analysis and ethnography.