The recent dispute over food prices between the UK’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco, and the UK’s biggest food and grocery manufacturer, Unilever shines a light on a deeper problem in…
Farming in the UK: can we nourish ourselves from this land?
Science, Brexit and ‘post-truth’ politics
STEPS co-director Andy Stirling is one of six researchers writing in the Guardian on ‘science after Brexit’. A longer version of his part of the Guardian article is below. The…
Brexit and development
As Britain faces the prospect of leaving the European Union, here’s a couple of blog posts on what the referendum result might mean for the UK’s role in international development….
Learning from the past about rapid transition
What can history teach us for the task of rapid transition in the face of climate change and corrosive inequality? Historian Molly Conisbee, a speaker at this week’s Transformations events…
Research collaboration for global challenges: why it’s really hard
On 17-18 March at London Zoo was the final conference of a project I have been involved in over the past four years on zoonoses, ecosystems and wellbeing in Africa….
‘This hope is real’: how COP21 frames the future
Who would have bet any meaningful amount of money, a month ago, that most of the world would sign up to 1.5 degrees at COP21? Of course there were celebrations…
What lies behind the UK’s strange policy on nuclear power?
The UK chancellor George Osborne has recently made further commitments to support massive new investment in nuclear infrastructure, including the much-criticised Hinkley C power station. Why is the UK determined…
Why Germany is dumping nuclear power – and Britain isn’t
by Philip Johnstone and Andy Stirling The starkly differing nuclear policies of Germany and the UK present perhaps the clearest divergence in developed world energy strategies. Under the current major…
Submerged origins of UK nuclear lock-in?
By Andy Stirling, STEPS Co-Director and Phil Johnstone, Research Fellow at SPRU – Science Policy Research Unit Many legitimately contrasting views are possible on the pros and cons of nuclear…
Restart Podcast: Adrian Smith on grassroots innovation
The London-based Restart project, which promotes community repair for electronics, interviewed STEPS researcher Adrian Smith for their latest podcast, ‘Searching for the roots of grassroots innovation’. In it, Adrian discusses…