DESIGN
art, activism, collaboration
Dr Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs
Senior Sustainability Researcher - Imagination, Lancaster University
She is an interdisciplinary researcher at the intersection of environmental sustainability, energy demand, design, and lifestyle change. Currently she is focused on working with organisations to develop new ways to intervene in environmental sustainability issues (e.g. reduce waste, carbon footprint, and energy demand) to create a ‘culture of sustainability’ which is mainstreamed into communities’ everyday life.
She is based in the UK at Lancaster University's Beyond Imagination. Before that, she was a Lecturer in Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews teaching on sustainable consumption, theories of change and activism.
SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION
theories of change, everyday life, excess consumption
ENERGY & COMFORT
changing expectations and use of space
CONSULTING
mainstreaming sustainability
DESIGN
art, activism, collaboration
RESEARCH PROJECTS
Home Comfort & Energy demand (PhD)
Renewable, distributed energy generation & 'smart' homes (Research Fellow)
House size & Energy demand - Why is Bigger Better? (Principal Investigator)
An international study exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on everyday life practices among citizens across different countries of the world (UK, USA, China, Vietnam, Switzerland, Ireland, France, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands). The study will help shed light on the impact of the pandemic on people’s everyday lives and domestic consumption as well as how governments can best respond in the post-COVID recovery.
Since June 2020, this project has gathered data from around 250 research participants through interviews and photo diaries.
The collaborative research is still underway, with data to analyse as but the international group of researchers have been actively blogging: see our website for emerging results and publications.
Design Research & Sustainability
Design and design research makes important contributions to climate change for 4 key reasons:
Recommended readings and links
Sustainability & Consumption
Articles
Maniates (2001) Plant a Tree, Buy A Bike, Save the World? [brilliant and easy to read critique of individualization of responsibility]
Books
Middlemiss (2018) Sustainable Consumption [core text]
Thunberg (2019) No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference [if you need hope]
Willis (2020) The Democratic Challenge of Climate Change [if you're questioning what you can do & our democratic system]
Academic Writing Resources
Publications
Reid, L. & Ellsworth-Krebs, K. (2021). Demanding expectations: Exploring the experience of distributed heat generation in Europe. Energy Research & Social Science, 71.
Ellsworth-Krebs, K. Implications of declining household sizes and expectations of home comfort for domestic energy demand, Nature Energy, 2020
Ellsworth-Krebs, K., Reid, L., & Hunter, C. J. Home Comfort and “Peak Household”: Implications for Energy Demand. Housing, Theory and Society, 2019
Ellsworth-Krebs, K., Reid, L., and Hunter, CJ. Integrated framework for home comfort: relaxation, companionship and control, Building Research and Information, 2019.
Reid, L. and Ellsworth-Krebs, K. Nudge(ography) and practice theories: contemporary sites of behavioural science and post-structuralist approaches in geography, Progress in Human Geography, 2019.
Reid, L. and Ellsworth-Krebs, K. Practicing energy prosumption: using unsolicited online data to reveal everyday realities of solar thermal panels in the United Kingdom, Energy Research and Social Science, 34: 191-199, 2017.
Ellsworth-Krebs, K. and Reid, L. Conceptualising energy prosumption: exploring energy production, consumption and microgeneration in Scotland, UK. Environment and Planning A, 2016.
Ellsworth-Krebs, K., Reid, L. and Hunter, CJ. Home-ing in on Domestic Energy Research: 'house,' 'home,' and the importance of ontology. Energy Research and Social Science, 6:100-108, 2015.
Sustainable consumption
From behaviour change to systemic change
Domestic energy
Implications of home comfort, house size, sufficiency
Sustainability consulting
Mainstreaming sustainability in organisations