Previous Prize Winners 

2018 Prize Winners

Our 2018 article prize winners were:

  1. Paprocki, K. 2018. "Threatening Dystopias: Development and Adaptation Regimes in Bangladesh." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 108 (4):955-973. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/24694452.2017.1406330?journalCode=raag21

    View from the judges: The author brought together development studies and climate change in a rich way to show how the adaptation regime is imagined and experienced within a site in Bangladesh. The paper drew from a large corpus of in-depth empirical data and was very well written. The author showed continual analytical and conceptual precision in their filling out of the concept of the adaptation regime, which was impressive. The paper starts from a very particular case, but has broader relevance, for instance in the sense that it gives us an idea of how climate change might be cast more broadly as an opportunity in the future and what the consequences of this might be.
  2. Jared Fitzgerald, Juliet Schor and Andrew Jorgenson (2018) Working Hours and Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the United States, 2007-2013, Social Forces, 96(4):1851-1874 https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soy014

    View from the judges: this paper empirically explored the claim that reduced working hours leads to reduced carbon emissions. The paper was well framed in debates about climate change and de-growth and used state-level data to show how emissions and working hours were positively correlated across the US. The quantitative analysis was robust, controlling for different variables and using a variety of different modelling processes.
  3. Willis, Rebecca (2018). How Members of Parliament understand and respond to climate change. The Sociological Review,66(3), 475-91 https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026117731658

    View from the judges: this paper addresses a significant gap in research on the politics of climate change by focusing on the day-to-day life of MPs. We thought that the composite narratives through which these stories were told was innovative. The paper generates findings that are likely to be relevant to both academic and non-academic audiences. 

2016 Prize Winners

Our 2016 article prize winners were:

  1. Anneleen Kenis (2016) Ecological citizenship and democracy: Communitarian versus agonistic perspectives. Environmental politics 35(6): 949-970 
  2. Gordon Walker, Neil Simcock and Rosie Day (2016) Necessary energy uses and a minimum standard of living in the United Kingdom: Energy justice or escalating expectations. Energy Research and Social Science 18: 129-138 
  3. Prativa Spkota, Rodney J. Jeenan, Jana-Axinja Paschen, Hemant R. Ojha (2016) Social production of vulnerability to climate change in the rural middle hills of Nepal. Journal of rural studies, 48: 53-64

Special Recognition is given to Angela Last's paper in Society and Space entitled 'Re-reading worldliness: Hannah Arendt and the question of matter'  with the judges noting 'We were impressed by Last's nuanced discussion of materialism, and novel use of Arendt's work in assessing its pitfalls. However we decided ultimately that […] it was slightly too tangential to climate change to be considered amongst the winners. We nevertheless wanted to give recognition to what was agreed by all to be a sophisticated work.'

2015 Prize Winners

Our 2015 article prize winners were:

  1. Rebecca Whittle (2015) Guilt and elation in the workplace: emotion and the governance of the environment at work, Environmental Values 24: 581-601. doi: 10.3197/096327114X13947900182111
  2. Elizabeth Hall and Todd Sanders (2015) Accountability and the academy: Producing knowledge about the human dimensions of climate change. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 21(2): 438-461. Doi: 10.1111/1467-9655.12162
  3. Murray Goulden and Alexa Spence(2015) Caught in the middle: the role of the facilities manager in organisational energy use. Energy policy, 85: 280-287. Doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2015.06.014

2014 Prize Winners

Our 2014 article prize winners were:

  1. Martin Phillips and Jennifer Dickie (2014) Narratives of transition/non-transition towards low carbon futures within English rural communities, Journal of Rural Studies (34) pp. 79-95. DOI: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2014.01.002
  2. Ritsuko Ozaki and Isabel Shaw (2014) Entangled Practices: Governance, Sustainable Technologies, and Energy Consumption, Sociology 48(3) pp.590–605. DOI: 10.1177/0038038513500101
  1. Warren Pearce (2014) Scientific data and its limits: rethinking the use of evidence in local climate change policy, Evidence & Policy 10 (2) pp. 187-203. DOI: 10.1332/174426514X13990326347801

2013 Prize Winners

Our 2013 article prize winners were:

  1. Matthew Fry (2013) 'Cement, carbon dioxide, and the 'necessity' narrative: A case study of Mexico’, Geoforum 49, 127–138.  DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.06.003
  2. Pauline Leonard (2013) 'Changing organisational space. Green? Or lean and mean?' Sociology, 47(2), 333-349 DOI: 10.1177/0038038512441280
  3. Chris Shaw  (2013) 'Choosing a dangerous limit for climate change: Public representations of the decision making process', Global Environmental Change, 23(2): 563-571 DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.12.012

We highlight two other papers for commendation because they were so close to the winning papers - coming in 4th and 5th place are:  

  1. Browne et al. 'Developing novel approaches to tracking domestic water demand under uncertainty - a reflection on the 'up scaling' of social science approaches in the United Kingdom'.  Water Resources Management, 27(4), pp1013-1035; DOI: 10.1007/s11269-012-0117-y and
  2. Jaspal et 'Human Responses to Climate Change: Social Representation, Identity and Socio-psychological Action'. Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, DOI:10.1080/17524032.2013.846270

2012 Prize winners

The inaugural article prize winners were:

  1. Sarah Hards for her article, 'Social Practice and the Evolution of Personal Environmental Values'published in Environmental Values (2011) 20: 23-42 DOI: 10.3197/096327111X12922350165996
  2. David Uzzell and Nora Rathzel for 'Trade unions and climate change: the jobs versus environment dilemma'published in Global Environmental Change (2011) 21: 1215-1223. DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.07.010
  3. Gill Seyfang and Alex Haxeltine for (2012) 'Growing Grassroots Innovations: Exploring the role of community-based social movements for sustainable energy transitions'Environment and Planning C 30(3) 381-400 doi:10.1068/c10222.
  4. Brigitte Nerlich for (2010) ''Climategate': Paradoxical Metaphors and Political Paralysis', Environmental Values, vol. 19(4), pages 419-422. DOI: 10.3197/096327110X531543