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Clean Carbon
Email:
mbuechs@soton.ac.uk

Dr Milena Büchs 

Associate Professor in Sociology and Social Policy, Director of Postgraduate Research,Website Coordinator

Dr Milena Büchs's photo

Dr Milena Büchs is Associate Professor in Sociology and Social Policy within Social Sciences: Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology at the University of Southampton.

I am interested in supervising PhD students in areas related to social and political aspects of climate change and the environment, as well as welfare state transformation and comparative social policy.

Milena Buchs joined the Division in 2005. Her current research focuses on issues around inequality and climate change, as well as practice change, in particular in relation to energy saving and low-carbon lives.

Milena studied sociology, politics and economics at the Free University Berlin and was awarded a PhD in political sciences from the Humboldt-University Berlin in 2005 for her studies on European social policy.

Milena was a visiting fellow at the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change Research and the Environment, London School of Economics, March to May 2009 and a Marie Curie Fellow (EU-funded) at the Centre for Comparative Research in Social Welfare, University of Stirling (December 2002 to November 2003).

Research interests

  • Low carbon living, practices change and wellbeing
  • Inequality and climate change

Milena is currently a Researcher Co-Investigator on the EPSRC-funded Liveable Cities programme grant that examines pathways for combining carbon reduction with wellbeing in cities, involving Southampton, Birmingham and Lancaster as case study cities. The Southampton project will work with around 200 households over a two-year period to examine relationships between energy use and wellbeing.

Milena is also a Co-investigator on the ESRC/EPSRC-funded project 'The role of community-based initiatives in energy saving'. This project investigates the role that third sector organisations can play in encouraging households to save more energy (2010–2014).

From 2009 to 2013, Milena was co-directing, with Professor Graham Smith, a programme on 'The Third Sector and the Environment' within the Third Sector Research Centre. This programme examined diverse ways in which third sector organisations support people to change their practices and lead low carbon lives through case study and survey based research. It also ‘mapped’ the environmental third sector in England and explored the extent to which environmental concerns are mainstreamed across the sector.

Milena was also Principal Investigator on the ESRC-funded project 'Who emits most? The distribution of CO2 emissions across UK households' (2011–2012), with Co-Investigators Dr Sylke Schnepf and Dr Nicholas Bardsley (Reading University). This project used the Living Cost and Food Survey to explore the distribution of emissions across UK households, as well as potential distributional impacts of climate change mitigation policies.

Research project(s)

Who Emits Most? An Analysis of UK Households' CO2 Emissions and their Association with Socioeconomic Factors

The third sector and the environment

Community-based initiatives in energy saving

(Liveable Cities)Transforming the Engineering of Cities to Deliver Societal and Planetary Wellbeing

Director of Postgraduate Research

Website Coordinator

In 2014/15, Milena teaches on the following modules:

PhD supervision

Milena is interested in supervising PhD students in areas related to social and political aspects of climate change and the environment, as well as welfare state transformation and comparative social policy.

Milena is currently supervising the following research students:

  • Elizabeth Allinson: ‘The Role of Suitable Alternative Natural Green Space (SANGS) in Deflecting Disturbance from High Value Wildlife Sites' (with Guy Poppy)
  • Alexander Afful: ‘The Green Deal in the Privately Rented Sector (with Patrick James)
  • Duygu Cihan: ‘Relationships between low carbon living and wellbeing’ (with Jane Falkingham)
  • Greg Fisher: ‘Acting collectively in social complexity’ (with Seth Bullock)
  • Josh (Brian) Moran: ‘EU gender equality policies – a fuzzy set analysis’ (with Traute Meyer)
  • Carolina Navarrete Frias: ‘Multi-level governance in natural resource management’ (with Kate Schreckenberg and Guy Poppy)
  • Aasia Nisar: 'Sustainable housing' (with Pauline Leonard)
  • Tom Rushby: ‘Modelling Household Carbon Allowances' (with Graham Smith and Patrick James)
  • Roger Tyers: ‘Nudging the Jet set to offset: How to increase take-up of voluntary carbon offsets for flying’ (with Gerry Stoker and Nick Clarke)
  • Fatih Urkmezer: ‘New urban poverty in Turkey' (with Traute Meyer)
  • Alexander Voccia: ‘Justice in Climate Change Adaptation programmes in Peru' (with Pia Riggirozzi)

Milena has supervised the following PhD students to completion:

  • 2014, Matthew Healey 'Young people's use of the internet' (with Pauline Leonard)

Milena is also coordinating the Environment, Energy and Resilience Pathway of the ESRC Doctoral Training Centre at Southampton, together with Ellie Biggs.

Dr Milena Büchs
Sociology and Social Policy Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences University of Southampton Southampton SO17 1BJ United Kingdom

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