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Research

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Climate Change

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Circular Economy

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Food
Systems

Research interests

  • Political economies and ecologies of management, organisation and sustainability

  • Business and governance of climate change and carbon markets

  • Sustainability of, and circular economy approaches to, food systems

  • Environmental activism inside and outside organisations and corporations

  • Relations between business, governments and civil society

  • Circular economy and doughnut economics approaches

Research projects

Professor Boehm’s research focuses on a range of social scientific analyses of problems of environmental sustainability and circular economy. He is currently engaged in the following projects, many of which have received funding from a range of sources:

Food and the Circular Economy: Exploring the opportunities available to, and challenges faced by, small and medium-sized enterprises in the food and beverages manufacturing industry as they transition towards the circular economy.

Climate policy and carbon markets: A critical interrogation of the social struggles involved in forming a sustainable climate policy. Prof Boehm has developed critical understandings of the role of carbon markets, arguing that they have been a distraction and that they have had a range of unintended, negative social and environmental consequences.

Sustainability of the food system: Developing an inter-disciplinary and political economy approach to understanding issues of health, well-being, environmental sustainability, work and labour in the global food system. Prof Boehm has run funded research projects on local food systems, agroecological business and health and well-being.

The water-food-energy-environment nexus: Expanding our perspective of the nexus by incorporating political, economic and social issues that are not normally considered by environmental scientists and systems engineers.

Environmental activism amongst social movements, community groups, NGOs, policymakers and company employees and managers: Expanding our perspective of activism to include domains not normally considered to be ‘activist’.

Political economy and governance of organisation: Expanding our view of organisation to include social movement, environmental and political activities. Such a view must include an understanding of the social struggles between business, government and civil society actors who often have different interests, facing divergent material realities and practices.

In all of the above areas, he’s been supervising Masters dissertations and PhD theses.

Research and Impact Funding Awarded

Post-doctoral Supervision

  • 2019-2020: Olga Andrianova, UK, Tevi: Environmental Growth for Business in Cornwall.

  • 2017-2018: Roberta de Angelis, UK, Circular Economy

  • 2015-2016: Rogerio Fae, Brazil, Relations between the national development strategy and the social construction of space in the city of Rio Grande, Brazil.

  • 2014: Annika Skoglund, Sweden, ‘Green Human Resource Management: The case of Vattenfall’

  • 2013: Patricia Mendonca, Brazil, ‘Social movements in Brazil: the contribution of political discourse analaysis’

  • 2012: Eloise Dellangnelo, Brazil, ‘Laclau and Mouffe’s relevance for organization and management studies'

PhD Supervision

Current students:

  • Josep Pinyol: The circular economy policy of the European Union (Marie Curie PhD scholarship)

  • Christoffer Söderlund Kanarp (SLU, Sweden): Climate Adaptation in Sweden (Formas scholarship)

  • Siddhartha Dabhi: Renewable Energy development in India (Exeter; University of Exeter International Excellence Scholarship for Postgraduate Research)

  • Ho, Chia-Hao: Circular Economy internal activists: A social network analysis (Exeter)

Completed PhD projects:

  • Celal Cahit Agar: Turkey’s great leap forward: social and environmental implications (Exeter)

  • Jasper Finkeldey: The social and environmental realities of mining in South Africa (Essex, ESRC PhD scholarship award)

  • Ruth Melville: Measuring the Unmeasurable: Exploring the Impact of Measurement on Value in the Arts (Essex, ESRC PhD scholarship award)

  • Tamás Lestar: Managing for food sustainability: Vegans and the vegan food society (Essex)

  • Francisco Valenzuela: Driving (e)quality: Exploring subjectivity in the implementation of emergent public sector reforms in Chilean higher education (Essex, Chilean Government scholarship)

  • Will Lewis: The political organisation of GM food: A discourse analysis (Essex)

  • David Watson: Assessing the contribution of a more localised food system to wellbeing (Essex, ESRC PhD scholarship award)

  • Lauren Crabb: Carbon markets: A crucial mechanism in our fight against climate change or another example of imperialism? (Essex)

  • Matthew Hancocks: Disclosing Disclosing: An immanent critique of Disclosing New Worlds as a key text in the Processual School of Entrepreneurship Studies (Essex)

  • Sanjay Lanka: The Araku Way: Sustainability Accounting for Fair Trade Coffee (Essex, Essex University scholarship award)

  • Bo Le: Governance and supply chain management in the electric car industry in China (Essex)

  • Neil Sutherland: Social Movement Organisations: Democracy, Participation and Leadership (Essex)

  • Samuel Mansell: A Critique of Stakeholder Theory (Essex)

  • Birke Otto: Politics and Management in Water Governance: Networks, Knowledge and Capacities (Essex)

  • Aanka Batta: Becoming Selves: Psychoanalysis and Consumer Identity (Essex)

Visiting students:

  • Yuna Fontoura, Brazil, The governance of food security: a discourse analysis

  • Rafael Kruter Flores, Brazil, The appropriation of water: A critique

Links

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