Liz's research focuses on public engagement with local environmental policy and practice in the context of the need for climate mitigation and adaptation.
Liz’s early career looked at local authority environmental policy making via Local Agenda 21. In the early 2000s she undertook a large study of Community Waste Projects which were innovating in the waste and recycling sector. Since 2004 Liz’s work has focused on public engagement with water policy and practice, variously giving attention to water efficiency, flood resilience and improving water quality.
All Liz’s work is collaborative, following action research principles, and she has worked with a range of stakeholders including water companies, local authorities and community groups. A result of this collaboration has been a set of practitioner focused outputs, such as the report on Community Engagement for Nature Based Solutions. It is also notable that Liz’s research has mostly been undertaken in partnership with academic engineers, though she has also worked with economists, ecologists, landscape architects and historians. Her main empirical focus has been the UK but she has also collaborated with colleagues in Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.
As an interpretive social scientist, Liz steers a path between the critical traditions of social science and more ‘hopeful’ approaches of engineers and others seeking positive environmental solutions.
Liz’s work connects strongly with the UI's research around environment, climate and the development of epistemic practices which can produce the knowledge needed for more just cities.