The Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group (SLRG) was a collaborative project across many UK universities, with Andy Stirling,  STEPS Centre and SPRU,  serving as Deputy Director. Led overall by Tim Jackson at the University of Surrey, it ran from 2011 – 2014.

The Sussex component of the SLRG comprised two projects.

The first, involving Rachael Durrant, Adrian Smith and Andy Stirling, examined strategies adopted by civil society organisations in seeking to destabilise established unsustainable food production systems in the UK and establishing pathways for more sustainable alternatives.

The second was led by Bex White with Andy Stirling. It used multicriteria mapping (MCM) and other methods to investigate how civil society organisations involved in communal growing activities in the UK, seek to maintain their own resilience and influence established public and market institutions in the face of various kinds of threats.

This work linked to earlier STEPS Centre research on resilience and the role of civil society organisations in shaping pathways to sustainability – as well as work on the ‘opening up’ of appraisal using techniques like MCM.

Website: http://www.sustainablelifestyles.ac.uk/