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Dr Liza Griffin
Associate Professor
Development Planning Unit
Faculty of the Built Environment
- Joined UCL
- 3rd Sep 2012
Research summary
My research makes contributions in three areas: 1) fisheries politics, environmental governance and resilience; 2) health and spatial politics and 3) creative practice and environmental politics.
Work on environmental governance brings together thinking in human geography with advances in political science in ways that question some of the spatialities involved in environmental politics, while at the same time considering the power relations at the heart of environmental policy and institutions. The outcome of this symbiosis is not simply of academic interest, it also illuminates how and why institutions frequently fail to deliver their laudable intended outcomes - like environmental sustainability and social justice, for instance.
Emerging work on 2) health and spatial politics includes research on urban flooding and wellbeing, and greenspace use and health, gardening, wellbeing and dementia; and nature, culture and urban health.
My final area of research 3) creative practice and environmental politics, brings together thinking from my previous two strands of work, but advances them in new directions and in ways that again contribute to spatial-politics. It centrally involves the co-development of an international research network / collaboration ‘Creative Practice and the Anthropocene’ that is designed to explore how publicly engaged arts-based thinking and practice could intervene productively in the current environmental crisis. It encompasses creative outputs, engagements with artists and publics and publications. This bid concerns how creative practices like community-led like song making or fictional writing can contribute to the social processes required to build resilience against environmental change like flooding.
Overall, these three distinct, but related strands of work make contributions to the disciplines of geography, planning and politics in ways that engage publics and stakeholders, inform policy, produce impactful outcomes and are theoretically informed and innovative.
Teaching summary
Liza has taught politics, geography and planning at the University of Westminster, Oxford Brookes, Oxford University, Birmingham City University and Birkbeck.
Education
- University of Westminster
- Other qualification, Professional Certification | 2009
Biography
Liza completed her PhD in geography and politics at the Open University after which she joined the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster. She worked as a research fellow on a programme of research entitled Governance and Sustainability and then became a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Westminster.