Sustainable Consumption Institute

Josephine Mylan has been a Research Associate at the Sustainable Consumption Institute and Manchester Institute of Innovation Research since 2010. Jo's research interests lie in understanding how society can transition to more environmentally sustainable ways of consuming resources. This will require changes in the way we provision goods, including the technologies, economic and social arrangements, and cultural conventions which shape processes of production, distribution and consumption. To explore these dynamics she uses ideas from across economic sociology, evolutionary economics, and practice theory. She is particularly interested in the relationship between production arrangements and the social practices of consumers. Empirically her work focusses on mundane products which form part of everyday practices, such as eating.

Jo has a natural science background, graduating with a First Class degree in Environmental Science from Manchester University in 2002 (with prizes for best undergraduate dissertation and best overall results). She then went on to complete Masters degrees in Environmental Innovation (at the Manchester Science Enterprise Centre) and Sociological Research (in the School of Social Sciences), at the University of Manchester. She completed her ESRC funded PhD at Manchester Institute of Innovation Research in 2010. Her thesis was a study of the environmental consultancy industry, including how knowledge is used and organised and how this intersects with the dynamics of Ecological Modernisation.

Josephine currently works on the SCI Flagship project Demand and Innovation for Sustainable Consumption.