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Dr Susannah Fisher
Teching Fellow: 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.
Education
- University of Cambridge
- PhD, Human and Social Geography | 2012
- University College London
- MSc, Environmental and Sustainable Development | 2007
- University of Oxford
- BA Hons, Human Sciences | 2005
Biography
Susannah Fisher is a Senior
Researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, where
she leads action research projects supporting national and sub-national governments
to adapt to climate change in different contexts. Her areas of focus at IIED are the monitoring
and evaluation of climate change adaptation including measuring vulnerability
and resilience, and national and urban planning for climate change.
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.