Dr Frances Fahy is the Head of Geography and Senior Lecturer in National University of Ireland, Galway. Dr Fahy specialises in sustainable consumption, environmental governance and planning at all scales. She has published widely and led a number of research projects exploring sustainable consumption, environmental governance, innovative methods for public participation in planning and the development of collaborative planning tools including community derived indicators and community mapping. Her publications include two edited volumes – Methods of Sustainability Research in the Social Sciences (with Prof Henrike Rau, Sage, 2013) and Challenging Consumption (with Prof Anna Davies and Prof Henrike Rau, Routledge, 2014) – and peer reviewed articles in Global Environmental Change, Area, Nature and Culture, and Journal of Consumer Policy. Frances is the Past President of the Geographical Society of Ireland (2012-2014). She is a past Chair of the Planning and Environment Research Group (PERG) of the Royal Geographical Society (2007-2012). Frances was the recipient of the 2013-14 Fulbright Scholar Award and during her research leave in the US she explored the experiences of academics involved in policy-relevant research in the field of sustainability.
Sustainability is a key word in the environmental vocabulary informing how research projects in the social sciences are framed. This book provides a systematic and critical review of the key research methods used when studying sustainable strategies and outcomes. It is divided into four areas: Part I: examines the key challenges inherent to social scientific sustainability research, examining the issues involved in combining social and natural/physical research methods. Part II: covers methodologies aimed at the investigation of attitudes and behaviour observable at the local level - from families and households to individual organizations within communities Part III: looks at sustainability research at the regional and national level - from the link between citizens and local communities to supra-national and global organisations Part IV: covers recent developments in social scientific sustainability research which are both multi-scalar and interdisciplinary Bringing together contributions from international social scientists, the book will be suitable for academic and non-academic audiences in sustainability research and will be a core teaching text for undergraduate and postgraduates on courses in sustainability and sustainable development, geography and the environmental sciences.
