Environmental Politics Specialist Group

Convenor

Dr. Viviane Gravey , Queens University Belfast

Dr. Conor Little, University of Copenhagen

Aims

This PSAI Specialist Group aims to provide a forum for the growing community of scholars researching environmental politics in Ireland and beyond. Ireland and the wider world face significant challenges as a result of a growing variety of environmental stresses. From global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss to local environmental issues such as air and water pollution, an expanding global population coupled with resource-intensive patterns of production and consumption are placing increasing strains on ecosystems and societies. Mitigating these challenges and adapting to the consequences of environmental change are partly technical issues but they are also fundamentally political, with notable economic, social, and governance aspects. PSAI members who work on environmental politics do so from a range of perspectives and approaches (comparative politics, EU studies, International Relations, normative political theory), and focus on a variety of environmental issues (climate change, pollution, ocean and marine politics, energy policy) at multiple scales of governance (local, national, European, international).

Activities

The Specialist Group will hold an annual workshop to provide a venue for ongoing research on environmental politics in and about Ireland. This may be combined with a policy-focused panel involving contributions from practitioners and/or a keynote from a high-profile international speaker. The Specialist Group will also convene at least one panel on environmental issues at each PSAI annual conference. Beyond this, the Specialist Group will act as a springboard for combined panel proposals for international conferences such as PSA, ECPR, APSA, UACES and ISA.

Participants

Viviane Gravey, Queens University Belfast

Conor Little, University of Copenhagen

Diarmuid Torney, Dublin City University

John Barry, Queens University Belfast

Constantine Boussalis, Trinity College Dublin

Brendan Flynn, NUI Galway

Erica Frazier, Queens University Belfast

Sadbh O’Neill, University College Dublin

Fabian Schuppert, Queens University Belfast

Jane Suiter, Dublin City University

From our Blog

The 2019 European election in Ireland: not so second-order after all? 31/05/2019
Guest post by Dr Rory Costello, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Limerick. There is a natural tendency to interpret European election results in terms of national politics. This is not an unreasonable thing to do; after all, European elections in Ireland, as in many other countries, are to a considerable extent seen…
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Is there anything to be said for thinking about citizens’ assemblies? 14/05/2019
Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, recently promised to introduce a new Scottish independence referendum before the next Holyrood elections in 2021. That timeline is thought ambitious by many in Scotland, and for some her more significant announcement was that there would be a citizens’ assembly to debate “what kind of country are we seeking…
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Site News: Luke Field is stepping down as Editor 09/04/2019
A little change never hurt anyone. Now that we have completed our Brexit Countdown blog series in collaboration with the UK’s Political Studies Association, I can announce my intention to step down as Editor of the Irish Politics Forum – a role I have been lucky enough to have had since November 2016. Stepping away…
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Referendums in Ireland and the UK: comparisons and contrasts 04/04/2019
Recent referendums in Ireland and the UK highlight stark differences regarding the place of the referendum as a political institution within the respective overall political systems, and also raise some questions about how a referendum outcome should be interpreted. The most obvious difference is the highly specified role of the referendum in the Irish political…
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The Brexit Countdown Series: Some concluding thoughts, and an appeal 29/03/2019
Guest post by Muiris MacCarthaigh, President of the PSAI, and Feargal Cochrane, Vice-Chair of the PSA. This article concludes the blog series ‘Brexit Countdown’ by the Political Studies Association of Ireland (PSAI) and Political Studies Association (PSA). This closing editorial marks the end of the joint PSA-PSAI Brexit Countdown Blog series. Why 27 blogs? This…
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