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Dr Susannah Fisher
Lecturer: MSc in Social Development Practice (SDP)
Development Planning Unit
Faculty of the Built Environment
- Joined UCL
- 1st Sep 2018
Research summary
Susannah’s research
explores the politics and governance of responding to climate change in
different contexts. Her research interests are currently around three broad areas:
a)
The politics of planning for climate change and
systemic transitions: the role
of discourses, actors and institutions in shaping planning processes and
outcomes around climate change and pathways to decarbonisation. She is also
interested in participation in climate politics across scales and how ideas of
justice and inclusion move and become reformulated, and the implications for
climate policymaking.
b)
Defining and measuring adaptation ‘success’: critically exploring the discourses and
knowledge politics around what constitutes success in adapting to climate
change, what is embedded in different metrics and ideas of measurement, and how
these discourses shape how adaptation is financed and implemented at different
scales.
c)
Innovation for systems change: exploring what factors support emerging
innovations in decarbonisation and adaptation leading to systemic change within
socio-technical regimes.
Teaching summary
Susannah teaches a Masters module on measuring poverty and inequality in the MSc in Social Development Practice.
The course covers the main poverty metrics as well as critical work from Anthropology and Geography exploring how we create the world we seek to measure through processes of quantification.
Education
- University of Cambridge
- Doctorate, Doctor of Philosophy | 2012
- University College London
- Other higher degree, Master of Science | 2007
- University of Oxford
- First Degree, Bachelor of Arts (Honours) | 2005
Biography
Susannah Fisher is a Lecturer in the DPU and a Policy Fellow at SOAS. She also works with philanthropic foundations, multilateral climate funds, bilateral donors and research institutes to provide technical inputs into practical climate change projects and programmes.
Previously, she was the Head of Research at Climate-KIC where she developed a cross-cutting research and thought leadership portfolio on the role of innovation and policy experimentation in the systems change needed to address the urgent climate challenge. Prior to this she was a Team Leader and Senior Researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, whereshe led action research projects supporting national and sub-national governments to adapt to climate change in different contexts.
In 2015-16, she was seconded to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa where she worked with the African Climate Policy Centre on supporting national planning for climate change. Previously, she worked with the adaptation and development research stream at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics (LSE) on water governance under future climate change in South Asia and Africa, the use of insurance for adaptation and the National Adaptation Programme for England. She has also worked as a policy advisor in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and in public sector consultancy.
She holds a PhD from the Geography Department at the University of Cambridge on the politics and governance of climate change in cities and has published a range of policy-relevant publications as well as peer-reviewed articles and research papers on a range of topics around climate justice, planning and policy. Susannah has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses at Cambridge, UCL and the LSE and led courses and training for professionals.