The Environmental and Spatial Governance (ENSGOV) Research Group was formed in January 2022 with an aim to ’create a supportive and engaging environment for critical social science research into environmental and spatial governance, and through this engage in wider inter-disciplinary research to address key societal challenges.'

It has staff members (permanent and fixed-term research staff) and an associated community of PhD students, drawn from the disciplines of planning, architecture and geography.

Background

ENSGOV critically engages with spatial and regulatory practices that underpin and challenge effective and fair governance, particularly those associated with sustainable and just transitions. This includes issues such as public participation, environmental justice, housing, marine governance, energy transition and the social economy. The core focus of ENSGOV is its critical social science approach (particularly around issues of power, knowledge, spatial outcomes and resource distribution) and it seeks to progress this in a wider inter-disciplinary environment, working with researchers with expertise in issues such as health, design, natural science and from other social science perspectives. The research undertaken by ENSGOV is also strongly guided by processes of co-design and co-production with close partners from wider community, policy and practice organisations.

Aims

ENSGOV meets once a month with the purpose of:

• Discussing common research interests
• Providing support and mentoring for early career researchers and PhD students
• Scanning, appraising and responding to upcoming research calls and opportunities
• Hosting visiting speakers and welcoming visiting researchers
• Identifying and consolidating collaborations with other groups and organizations within QUB and beyond

The Future

We are very interested to hear from others who feel that they can help shape the broad agenda outlined above, including to start built a community of PhD students.  
 
Even with this initial team, ENSGOV will also have a strong cohort of PhD students, PDRAs, a research support manager, and international researchers employed using project funding , who will all be invited to contribute to the activities of ENSGOV. Staff are also strongly engaged with interdisciplinary research with teams from across QUB, including CESI, SECA, Public Health, HAPP and Psychology. 
 
The staff already aligned with ENSGOV bring with them a high quality publication profile (and several award-winning papers), a very strong track record for securing funding from competitive sources such as H2020 (e.g. MISTRAL, PERCILES, MOSES), RCUK (HULAP, HOPE, Groundswell) and a range of public interest research projects (e.g. Public opinion of planning).

Staff have very strong partnerships with organizations in policy and practice, in an All-Island context (UCD, UCC) and universities across the world including Western Ontario, IIT Kharagpur, University of Melbourne, University of Aalborg , DTU, ISCTE, IZES, St. Gallen, the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, University of Auckland, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, Luleå University, University of Jeddah, Nelson Mandela University (SA), SESYNC (USA) and the University of Western Australia.