Academic interests
Policies and politics of climate change research; collaboration and co-production; climate change adaptation; science policy; science-society interactions; boundary work and cultural cartographies of science; policy discourses and relationships between discourse and policymaking
PhD Research Fellow in Include: Research centre for socially inclusive energy transitions. Researching how Norwegian municipalities collaborate within the municipal organisation and with external actors for climate change mitigation. Interested in collaboration across disciplinary, sectoral and cultural boundaries, and how actors in different sectors experience and manage increasing expectations for cross-boundary collaboration and inclusion.
Background
In 2019, Iris finished an MPhil at SUM titled With and for Society? Experiences from CICERO Center for International Climate Research with User Involvement in Science. The thesis examines researchers' experiences with increased demands for user involvement, in relation to an ongoing science policy shift which emphasises the inclusion of non-academic stakeholders in decision making about and processes of scientific research.
From 2013 to 2017, Iris lived in Nepal, primarily working at the intergovernmental research institution International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) as Programme Officer for a large interdisciplinary research project on climate change adaptation in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region (specifically China, India, Pakistan and Nepal). Her role included coordinating the synthesis of research results from different disciplines in order to produce policy briefs and other materials intended to communicate the results to relevant "users" in and outside the region, as well as meeting with policymakers and other officials from the four countries in order to communicate research results. It was through this work that Iris became interested in the boundaries and interactions between science and policy in the climate field, as well as the challenges of collaboration across different kinds of boundaries.
Iris has a bachelor's degree in Anthropology and Sociology from Durham University in England, and wrote a bachelor's dissertation in social anthropology based on ethnographic research in Kanungu, Uganda titled "History repeats itself": Agricultural development and modernisation discourse in southwest Uganda. The dissertation discussed how different discourses of modernity and modernisation impact the development of Ugandan agricultural development policy as well as its reception by smallholder farmers in Kanungu.
Awards
- 2019: The Science Studies Colloquium Qualification Stipend
- 2018: The Science Studies Colloquium Master's Stipend
- 2013: The David Brooks Memorial Fund Award for Best Undergraduate Dissertation in Sociocultural Anthropology (Durham University)
- 2013: Van Mildert College JCR's Contribution to the Wider Community Award (Durham University)
- 2012: The Durham University Vice Chancellor's Scholarship for Academic Excellence
- 2012: The UEL International Development Undergraduate Conference's award for Best Paper in the plenary session on Development Theory & Economics