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Dr Claire Waterton
Sociology: Senior Lecturer CSEC: Director
Department: Sociology
Degree: PhD 'The Making and Politics of Environmental Knowledge', 2009, Lancaster University MSc Environmental and Ecological Science, Distinction, Lancaster University (1991-1992) BSc Rural Environment Studies, Wye College, University of London (1988-1991)
Associated research centres and groups: Centre for Science Studies, Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen)
Current Teaching
Undergraduate
- SOCL 100: Environment and Society
- SOCL 220: Critical Studies of the Environment
Masters
- SOCL527: Ecology, Conservation and Culture
- SOCL 931 Researching Technoscience
PhD students
At present I co-teach3 PhD students
- Huei-Chung's Hsiao. PhD on indigenous identity in Taiwan.
- Kathryn James. PhD on GM regulation and Food Security in Uganda
- Susan Starling. PhD on the 'free market', global biodiversity protection, and barcoding in taxonomic science.
Research Interests
Research interests
- Sociology/anthropology/cultural studies of science
- The making and politicsof scientific knowledge, especially that relating tonature/the environment
- Scientific and other forms of expertise
- The making of classifications
- Public perceptions of environmental issues and environmental risks
- The relationship of scientific knowledge to contempotary environmental policymaking in the UK, Europe and on a global level
- Analysis of deliberative mechanisms and participatory processes
- Performativityof method in STS
- The role of the science studies researcher in studying contemporary science and policymaking
- Science studies and the managment of the rural environment - see new project proposal
Research projects and funding
- 2010 (August-December)Understanding and Acting in Loweswater: Transferable Insights. Defra Funded. PI Claire Waterton Researchers are Ken Bell, Judith Tsouvalis, Lisa Norton, Stephen Maberly, Nigel Watson.
- 2007-2010 'Understanding and Acting in Loweswater: A Community Approach to Catchment Management' RELU funded. PI Claire Waterton. Researchers are Ken Bell, Judith Tsouvalis, Lisa Norton, Stephen Maberly, Nigel Watson.
- 2006-2009 'Taxonomy at a Crossroads: Science, Publics and Policy in Biodiversity'. ESRC funded. PIs Claire Waterton, Brain Wynne, and Johannes Vogel (NHM))
- ESRC (2005-6) databases, Naturalists and the Global Biodiversity Convention, PI with Rebecca Ellis (PI) and Maria Pacha (IEPPP)
- ESRC (2002-2005) 'Amateurs as Experts: harnessing new networks for biodiversity' (in collaboration with the Natural History Museum, London. Other PIs are Robin Grove-White and Johannes Vogel)
- ESRC Science and Society Programme (2005-6) 'Databases, Naturalists and the Global Biodiversity Convention'. Other PI Rebecca Ellis.
- DEFRA, January-July 2004 'Non-Indigenous Species: Exploring their Meanings in Human and Social Terms'. With Jeffrey Waage, Imperial College, London.
- Rural Environment and Land Use Programme (RELU), July- December 2004, 'Understanding Loweswater: a Study to Generate new Understandings of Ecological, Economic and Social Interactions in a Lake District Catchment'. PI with Steve Maberly (PI, CEH, Lancaster), Lisa Norton (CEH, Lancaster) and Jake Morris (IEPPP).
Potential Doctoral Proposals
The making of environmental knowledge.
The politics of environmental knowledge.
STS and the making and politics of databases.
Social studies of classifications.
Knowledge, practices and biodiversity.
The idea of the case study in STS.
A place for critique within STS.
Career
April 2007 - present: Senior Lecturer in Environment and Social Policy, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University
January 2006- April 2007 - Lecturer in Environment and Social Policy, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University
October 2000 - 2006: Lecturer in Environment and Social Policy, Institute for Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy (IEPPP), Lancaster University. This lectureship was funded through HEFCE and was intended to create bridges between the natural and the social sciences at Lancaster University and through extended research and policy networks
1992-2000 Researcher within the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, Lancaster University
March 1998 - Sept. 2000: Applicant, co-ordinator and researcher of ESRC-funded project 'Scientists Reflect on Science: How Scientists Encounter the Environment-Risk Domain'.
Dec. 1997 - Mar. 1998: Researcher on Forestry Commission-funded project 'The Recreational uses of Woods and Forests in Contemporary Britain'.
Apr. 1994 - Dec. 1997: Researcher on an ESRC-funded project 'Databases and European Environmental Policy', as part of CSEC's 'Science, Culture and the Environment' Programme, Lancaster University.
Oct. 1993 - Apr. 1994: Researcher on WWF-funded project on the European CORINE programme (Co-Ordination of Information on the Environment).
June - Oct. 1993: Researcher on international social science project, 'Social Learning in the Management of Global Environmental Risks', co-ordinated by Professor Bill Clarke at Harvard University, USA.
Oct. 1992 - June 1993: Researcher at CSEC, Lancaster University, on Cumbria County Council-funded project 'Public Perceptions and the Nuclear Industry in West Cumbria'.
Publications
Edited Book
Szerszynski, B. Heim, W. and Waterton, C. (eds.) (2003) Nature Performed: Environment, Culture and Performance, Oxford: Blackwell.
Peer reviewed journal articles
Waterton, C. (2009) 'Experimenting with the Archive: STS-ers as Analysts and Co-constructors of Databases and other Archives', Science Technology and Human Values, forthcoming (revised September 2008).
Stengel, K., Taylor, J., Waterton, C. and Wynne, B. 2008 Plant Sciences and the Public Good, Science Technology and Human Values, published online May 2008 as 10.1177/0162243907312955, forthcoming in hard copy 2008.
Ellis, R. Waterton, C. and Wynne, B. 2008 'Taxonomy, Biodiversity and their Publics in 21st Century Barcoding' Public Understanding of Science, in press.
Waterton, C. Norton, L. and Morris, J. (2006) Understanding Loweswater: Interdisciplinary Research in Practice. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 57, 2, 2006, 277-293.
Waterton, C. (2005) 'Scientists' Conceptions of the Boundaries between their Own Research and Policy'. Science and Public Policy, 32, 6, 435-444
Ellis, R. and Waterton, C. (2005) 'Caught between the Cartographic and the Ethnographic: the Whereabouts of Amateurs, Professionals and Nature in Knowing Biodiversity' Environmental Planning D, 'Society & Space', 23, 673-693.
Waterton and Ellis R. (2004) 'Environmental Citizenship in the making: The participation of volunteer naturalists in UK biological recording' Science & Public Policy, 31, 2 95-105.
Waterton, C. (2002) 'From Field to Fantasy: Classifying Nature, Constructing Europe, Social
Studies of Science, 32/2, 177-204.
Waterton, C. and Wynne, B, (1996): 'Building the European Union: Science and the Cultural Dimensions of Environmental Policy'. Journal of European Public Policy, 3, 3, 421-440.
Shackley, S., Wynne, B. and Waterton, C. (1996) 'Imagine Complexity. The Past, Present and Future Potential of Complex Thinking', Futures, 28, 3, 201-225.
Reviews and Specialist Journal Articles
Waterton, C. (2007) Review of Bowker, G. (2005) Memory Practices in the Sciences, London and Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 179-187, in Review Symposium, 'Taking a Non-Linear Plunge into the Mnemonick Deep'. Metascience 16: 179-203.
Waterton, C. (2003), Messing about on the river, Salmo Trutta, 6: 56-58.
Waterton, C. (2000) Research and the Bigger Picture, Science and Public Affairs, 22-23.
Waterton, C. (1996) European Environmental Information: CORINE and the EEA - but where are the NGOs? ECOS 17, 1.
Waterton, C. (1996) CORINE: Darling of Conservation? ECOS, 16, 2.
Book Chapters
Waterton, C. and Wynne, B. (2004) 'In the Eye of the Hurricane: knowledge and social order in the European Environment Agency', In Jasanoff, Sheila, ed. States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and Social Order. London: Routledge, pp. 87-108.
Waterton, C. (2003) 'Performing the classification of nature'. In Szerszynski, B. Heim, W. and Waterton, C. (eds.) 2003Nature Performed: Environment, Culture and Performance, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 111-129.
Waterton, C. and Wynne, B. (1999) 'Can Focus Groups Access Community Views?', in Barbour, R. and Kitzinger, J. (Eds.) Developing Focus Group Research: Politics, Theory and Practice. Sage, pp. 127-143.
Waterton, C. and Wynne, B. (1998) 'Public Information on the Environment: the Role of the European Environment Agency', in Lowe, P. and Ward, S. (Eds.) British Environmental Policy and Europe: From a National to a European Perspective. London: Routledge, pp. 119-137.
Selected Research Reports and Research Booklets
Ellis, R., Pacha, M. and Waterton, C. Assembling Nature: the social and political lives of biodiversity software. Lancaster University, ISBN 978-1-86220-207-8.
Ellis, R. Grove-White, R. Waterton and Vogel, J. (2005) Nature: Who Knows? English Nature/NHM/Lancaster University.
Waterton, C., Wynne, B. Grove-White, R. Mansfield, T. (2001) 'Scientists Reflect on Science: Scientists' Perspectives on Contemporary Science and Environmental Policy', CSEC Report, Lancaster University.
Macnaghten, P., Grove-White, R., Waterton, C., and Weldon, S. (1998) Woodland Sensibilities: Recreational Uses of Woods and Forests in Contemporary Britain, Report to the Forestry Comission, CSEC, Lancaster University.
Waterton, C., Grove-White, R. Rodwell, J. and Wynne, B. (1995) CORINE: Databases and Nature Conservation - the New Politics of Information in the European Union. WWF/CSEC/UVS, Lancaster University.
Wynne, B., Waterton and Grove-White, R. (1993) Public Perceptions and the Nuclear Industry in West Cumbria. Report to Cumbria County Council, Lancaster University.
Awards and Membership
Awards
Claire Watertonreceived a fellowship in 2005 from the US Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC) and the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to spend two months at the Centre for Science Technology and Society, Santa Clara University, California, USA. Here she made links with Professor Geoff Bowker, the Director of the Centre, Susan Leigh Starr and other science studies scholars and attended a two week workshop on Values in Design. The purpose of the visit was to carry out theoretical work on contemporary databases which would feed into the ESRC Science in Society project 'Databases, Naturalists and the Global Biodiversity Convention'.
Membership
I was elected a member of the Council of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST)in January 2009.
Other Interests and Hobbies
Singing
Working on myallottment
Associated Keywords: Environment, Environmental knowledge, Natureculture, Policy, Science and technology studies, Sociology
View all research activities, ePrints, news and events associated with Claire Waterton.
Contact Details
Tel: +44 (0)1524 593322
Room: Bowland North, B147
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Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YD
United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 1524 510851
Fax: +44 (0) 1524 510857
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