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University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

IGS: Current and Recent Graduate Research

Karen Anderton

Sub-national government responses to reducing the climate impact of cars

Supervisor(s):
Contact Info:

Academic Profile

Karen holds a LLB (Hons) in Law and International Politics (2002) from Keele University and an MSc (with Distinction) in Environment and Development (2003) from the University of Reading. Karen has been a freelance climate change and environmental consultant for the past 3 years whilst undertaking her D.Phil. Work includes managing / assisting projects related to climate change mitigation / environmental issues for various public, private, academic and non-profit clients, in areas including preparing policy briefs; stakeholder engagement; report / web content / copywriting; and event coordination and delivery. Since 2003, Karen has been working on climate change mitigation research and has managed several international projects, for organisations including The Climate Group, Sustainable Energy Action, the Environment Investigation Agency and the Living Earth Foundation. She was a Researcher / Project Manager for The Climate Group for 4 years, a role which involved management of various research projects, including Carbon Down Profits Up, an annual index report examining corporate and sub-national government responses to climate change, listing best practice examples of successful greenhouse gas reduction measures and the financial benefits of these actions.

Awards
  • Inaugural John Heasman Bursary 2007-2010

Current Research

Karen's professional research interests include: governance; policy implementation processes; theories of leadership; and climate change policy.

Karen's doctoral research examines sub-national government responses to reducing the climate impact of cars, and is a comparative study assessing the effectiveness of policies implemented by a variety of sub-national state governments globally, in terms of their ability to reduce the climate impacts of transport - specifically cars.

The main hypothesis of the research is that there is a disparity between effective environmental / climate change policy and transport policy which causes these policy interventions to be ineffectual. Without successfully linking frameworks and interested stakeholders in the process, tangible emissions reductions will be difficult to achieve.

To test the hypothesis, the research will examine efforts to mitigate emissions from cars through conducting a comparative analysis of specific policies (parking, alternative fuel promotion and public transport provision, for example) implemented by the subject state governments. Government legislation and official policy documents will be studied and interviews will be conducted with diverse professionals involved in the policy development process in each state. These will look to assess the extent of connectivity between the spheres of state government in this process and subsequent policy implementation.

Teaching

  • Tutor in climate change law and policy - Trinity Term 2009

Selected Publications

Book Chapters
  • Anderton, K. (2010) The need for integrated institutions and organisations in transport policy - the case of transport and climate change. In, Banister, D. and M. Givoni (eds.) Integrated Transport: From Policy to Practice (Taylor and Francis).
Book Reviews
Conference Papers / Presentations
  • Anderton, K. (2009) The future of sub-national climate change governance: first mover advantage or end of the road? Accepted for presentation at 'Earth System Governance: People, Places, and the Planet' 2009 Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, 2-4 December 2009.
  • Anderton, K. (2009) Dealing with climate change - the need for organizational integration. Paper presented at 1st Transatlantic NECTAR Conference 2009, Arlington, Virginia USA, 18-20 June, 2009.
Non-Academic Papers

Hobbies

An avid rugby fan, Karen has played since she was 16, she has been at Reading Ladies for 6 years and was delighted to have joined OUWRFC in the 2009-10 season and subsequently awarded a full blue. She also enjoys hiking and running and aims to train for a marathon once her D.Phil is completed.