Professor Elizabeth Shove

Elizabeth Shove

Sociology: Professor

Degree: B.A. Sociology, University of York D.Phil, Sociology, University of York

Associated research centres and groups: Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe), Centre for Science Studies, ImaginationLancaster, TOPIX

Personal website

Current Teaching

I teach a third year course on "Technologies and Practices of Everyday Life", and an MA Module in which students undertake a small-scale research project from start to finish during the course of the term. This course, "Research Projects in Practice: From Design to Dissemination" is also available through the Faculty Research Training Programme.

Research Interests

I came to Lancaster in 1995 as deputy director of the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change and was director of the Centre for Science Studies for a couple of years before joining the Sociology Department in 2000. My current research interests have to do with the relation between consumption, everyday practice and ordinary technology.

See my personal web page for recent publications and details of past and present projects that explore these themes, including:

Transitions in Practice - a three year ESRC funded Climate Change Leadership Fellowship, stared October 2008.

Sustainable Practices Research group - I am on the management team of the SPRG (2010-2013), and involved with three projects in the group: keeping cool,interaction and engagement, and theoretical development and integration.

The Design of Everyday Life - published by Berg, 2007, is based on 'Designing and Consuming: objects, practices and processes'. This project, undertakenwith Matt Watson at Durham University and Jack Ingram at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, exploits the potential for theoretical development at the interface of science and technology studies, design and the sociology of consumption. This projectwas funded by the ESRC's Cultures of Consumption programme.

The choreography of everyday life- a collaborative project with Mika Pantzar at the National Consumer Research Centre, Helsinki, Finland. We are writing about a range of different topics - Nordic Walking, Kitchen rationalisation, Floorball, Plastic, Heart Rate Meters and more - as part of an ambitious attempt to construct an 'integrative' theory of practice. The link will take you to a series of web pages outlining our ideas to date. '

Interactive Agenda Setting in the Social Sciences: A programme of six research workshops on non-academic concerns and academic research agendasfunded by the ESRC. The web site includes background papers and reports on interactive agenda setting and: disciplines, centres, interdisciplinarity and research programmes.

''Traces of Water', with Will Medd, is funded by the UK Water Industry Research Association. This project brings sociological ideas about practice and technology to bear on domestic water consumption.The web site includes details of a programme of research workshops.

'Manufacturing Leisure' (2005), an electronic book, edited with Mika Pantzar, which examines innovations in fun. Together, the chapters show how consumers and producers are continuously and actively involved in integrating, inventing and reproducing specific combinations of ideologies, materials and forms of competence of which leisure practices are formed.

'Future Comforts', with Heather Chappells, examined future expectations of comfort and the indoor environment (funded by the ESRC's Environment and Behaviour Programme.). The future comforts web site includes a selection of papers and a bibliography of social scientific work on thermal comfort.

'Sustainable Domestic Technologies'with Alan Warde and Dale Southerton at Manchester University, is about the design and use of kitchens and bathrooms and is funded by the ESRC's Sustainable Technologies Programme.

Consumption, Everyday Life and Sustainability a five-year programme of workshops, exchanges and summer schools onconsumption, everyday life and sustainability" (funded by the European Science Foundation).

Potential Doctoral Proposals

Research students welcome on topics relating to innovations in practice - for instance in digital photography, and other changing and emerging hobbies and habits including DIY (home improvement); or outdoor pursuits; any applications of theories of practice to the study of markets (e.g. services) and/or organisations; or studies of failed technologies (in collaboration with Luis Araujo, Management School). Projects on changing infrastructures and institutions of everyday consumption - e.g. electricity, waste, water (with Will Medd or Gordon Walker in Geography).

Allison Hui: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/gradschool/pgrprofiles/259/

Shireen Chilcott: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/gradschool/pgrprofiles/202/

Julien McHardy: Electric bikes - design, testing and use

YiPing Cheng: storage and display in Taiwanese homes

Maarten van der Kamp: making and implementing organic food standards

Martin Green: Everyday climate change,seasonality, adaptability and demand

Stan Webster: The routines and rhythms sustainability

Janine Morley: Energy consuming practices

Eprints Publications Repository and Bibliographic Database

Elizabeth Shove has 25 selected publication records listed on this webpage. Use links to access abstracts and full text where available. View all records to sort by date, type and title. For all ePrints records go to http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk

Shove, Elizabeth and Walker, Gordon (2007) CAUTION! Transitions ahead: politics, practice, and sustainable transition management. Environment and Planning A, 39 (4). pp. 763-770. ISSN ISSN 0308-518X (print) 1472-3409 (electronic)

Shove, EA and Hand, M and Ingram, J and Watson, M (2007) The Design of Everyday Life. Berg. ISBN 9781845206833

Shove, E. (2005) Changing human behaviour and lifestyle: a challenge for sustainable consumption? In: Consumption - Perspectives from ecological economics. Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. 111-132.

Shove, E. A. and Pantzar, M. (2005) Consumers, Producers and Practices Understanding the invention and reinvention of Nordic walking. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5 (1). pp. 43-64. ISSN Online ISSN: 1741-2900 Print ISSN: 1469-5405

Hand, Martin; and Shove, Elizabeth; and Southerton, Dale. (2005) Explaining showering: a discussion of the material, conventional, and temporal dimensions of practice. Sociological Research Online, 10 (2). ISSN 1360-7804

Vliet, Bas van; and Chappells, Heather Mary; and Shove, Elizabeth. (2005) Infrastructures of consumption : environmental innovation in the utility industries. Earthscan, London. ISBN 9781853839955 (hbk.), 9781853839962 (pbk.)

Shove, Elizabeth (2004) Efficiency and Consumption: Technology and Practice. Energy & Environment, 15 (6). pp. 1053-1065. ISSN Paper: 0958-305X, Online: 0958-305X

Shove, EA (2003) Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: the Social Organization of Normality. Berg. ISBN 951-698-120-8

Shove, Elizabeth (2003) Converging conventions of comfort, cleanliness and convenience. Journal of Consumer Policy, 26 (4). pp. 395-418. ISSN 0168-7034

Shove, Elizabeth (2003) Principals, agents, actors and research programmes. Science and Public Policy, 30 (5). pp. 371-381. ISSN 0302-3427