Sustainable Consumption Institute

Sherilyn MacGregor joined the SCI in October 2015 as Reader in Environmental Politics. From 2006 to 2014 she was Senior Lecturer in Environmental Politics at Keele University (2006-2014) and a Research Associate and Post-doctoral Fellow at Lancaster University from 2002-2006. She received a PhD from the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto in 2002.

Sherilyn has a research and teaching profile that is international and interdisciplinary.  She has worked in universities in Canada, the USA, the UK, Germany, and France; her degrees are in gender studies, urban planning, and environmental studies.  One of a small number of scholars in the UK specialising in the interdisciplinary field of gender and environmental politics, Sherilyn’s research explores themes of environmental (un)sustainability, gender (in)equality, and theories and practices of citizenship.  Her research is animated by critical questions about power relations, environmental and social justice, the gendered divisions of labour and responsibility, and strategies for eco-social transformation in affluent societies.

Her research has been published in a range of journals including British Politics, Sociological Review, Hypatia, Local Environment, and Energy Policy.  Recent books include Environmental Movements around the World: Shades of Green in Politics and Culture (co-edited with Timothy Doyle; 2014) and the fourth edition of Environment and Politics (co-authored by Timothy Doyle and Doug McEachern; 2015). She is currently sole editor of the Routledge International Handbook on Gender and Environment (to be published in 2016). 

A recent major research project was a three-year (£400+K) ESRC-EPSRC project, ‘Reducing Energy Consumption through Community Knowledge Networks’ (RECCKN, 2011-2013).  The RECCKN project compared how people find out about energy efficiency, the barriers to the spread of energy knowledge, and how this knowledge might be more effectively shared in different types of communities. A key finding was that peer networks in local areas - 'community knowledge networks' - can enable the sharing of information and lay expertise, ultimately leading to the spread of useful knowledge about using energy more efficiently.

Sherilyn has been part of the editorial team of Environmental Politics since 2007 and has been a Joint Editor with responsibility for green political thought manuscripts since 2012.  She is co-convenor of the Environmental Politics Standing Group (EPSG) of the European Consortium for Political Research and a member of the Energy and Climate Change Working Group of the European Union COST Action programme on Gender, Science, Technology and Environment (genderSTE).

Sherilyn has held visiting teaching positions at Sciences Po Lille, The University of Adelaide, and The University of Wisconsin. In 2014 she held a six-month residential Fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich.