Environmental Politics Specialist Group

Convenor

Dr. Diarmuid Torney , Dublin City University

Email: diarmuid.torney@dcu.ie

Dr. Louise Fitzgerald, University College Dublin

Email: louise.fitzgerald1@ucdconnect.ie

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

Build forward public: The case for a post pandemic housing imaginary 26/04/2021
By Mary P Murphy (Maynooth University) Expectations of paradigmatic change often overestimate the degree to which crises will result in change. The reality seems more consistent with Klein’s Shock Doctrine which associates crisis with a reinforcement of neo liberalism. Our experiences of the 2008 crisis and subsequent austerity means we should not be rose-tinted about the likelihood…
Diarmuid Torney
How Ireland’s response to the pandemic is impacted by austerity era reductions 31/03/2021
By Mary P Murphy (Maynooth University) and John Hogan (Technological University Dublin) The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic followed a decade after the 2008 financial crisis and the related €85 billion European troika bailout of Ireland in 2010. The fallout led to a period of austerity with a significant range of expenditure cuts. These cuts had direct impacts…
Diarmuid Torney
Irish feminists need to mobilise for a post-pandemic future built on an ethic of public care 12/03/2021
By Pauline Cullen and Mary Murphy, Maynooth University Women’s voices in Ireland have not been heard during the pandemic. Covid Women’s Voices, a diverse range of female workers observe daily the gendered realities of the pandemic and call for publicly funded childcare for frontline workers, in-person schooling for children of essential workers, and special protections for care workers…
Diarmuid Torney
Opinion polls and civil war politics 03/03/2021
By Shane Reynolds, PhD Student, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Limerick This weekend’s Sunday Business Post/Red C Opinion Poll, a year on from the first case of Covid in Ireland and slightly over a year since the 2020 general election, follows trends that have become apparent over the last year. The Irish Polling…
Diarmuid Torney
Bad questions or sour grapes? 26/02/2021
Today’s Irish Times poll created a small social media storm as some took delight in the apparent public shift in positions on the restrictions in Covid, and others, particularly supporters of the so-called ZeroCovid strategy, were appalled and immediately tried to poke holes in the survey. They argued that the questions were biased, and pointed…
Eoin O'Malley