Projects and experience
I'm interested in understanding and encouraging pro-environmental behaviour in the widest sense. Through my degrees and positions at different research institutions, I have had the chance to apply this approach to a variety of different areas, from transportation and energy usage, to media and public opinion, to collaborations in science and industry. This diversity has allowed me to gather extensive expertise in these applied domains, as well as a familiarity with a variety of research methods.
Below you can find a brief overview of my research activity thus far. You can also find my full CV including education details here, and publications and conference presentations resulting from the below projects here.
Locations of climate impacts and their relation to risk perception
I am currently undertaking postgraduate research at the University of Central Lancashire, exploring where people believe climate impacts take place, how they feel towards those places, and which the effect of these person-place relationships on climate perceptions and action.
In this line of research, I use a mixed method approach to integratie concepts such as psychological distance, social identity and objects of care in order to describe these processes in a holistic manner that is applicable to climate communication.
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How is plastic pollution protrayed in UK online news?
My master's project investigated how leading online news websites from the UK - specifically the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Mirror and the Daily Mail - talk about marine plastic pollution. Using quantitative text analysis, we were able to analyse all 943 articles mentioning the topic throughout 2019. There was a large variety of topics, many including emotional and individual stories. Political alignment and type of paper (broadsheet vs tabloid) influenced the extent to which topics were reported.
System Innovation for Sustainable Development
Between my Bachelor's and Master's degree I had the opportunity of working as a researcher in the project System Innovation for Sustainable Development at the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt. As part of a large team with multiple stakeholders from industry and research, I contributed to a sub-project investigating the potential of a reusable cup system in the city of Darmstadt. This included conducting research as well as disseminating our findings to via academic and industry channels.
Climart
As a research intern at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology I was able to contribute to the project Climart. This project investigated whether climate change-related art can affect perceptions and responses to climate change. As part of the intership I helped to plan, organise, and evaluate the pollution pods (pictured left), a participative artwork allowing visitors to experience levels of air pollution around the world. Additionally, I designed and ran a sub-project investigating how information about the artist and context changes the perception of environmental art.
Picture CC BY-NC 2.0 Michael Pinsky
Funding & Reviewing
I have experience in securing internal grants for small research projects. This includes a £5000 grant from the University of Surrey for a trial of eco-containers, as well as several smaller grants from the University of Central Lancashire: a £3600 cluster seed grant on citizen perspectives on nuclear energy in the context of the zero-carbon transition, and a grant for a fully funded 9-week research internship student.
I have acted as a peer reviewer for the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Global Environmental Change, the Journal of Cognitive Psychology and others.
