Key Terms: water governance, climate change adaptation, environmental governance, water governance, climate change adaptation, governance of societal transformation processes, property rights, governance of natural resources, sustainability, ecological economic, public engagement, member of the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA), the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) and the European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE), societal transformation processes, Water governance, water management, Drought and water scarcity (especially in the UK, Climate change adaptation, Management of subsurface/underground space, Climate change and narratives (myths, stories, legends), Environmental governance
Kevin is a social scientist who specializes in normative and analytical aspects of governance, especially with regard to water and climate change adaptation. His research interests include (multilevel) environmental governance, water governance, climate change adaptation, governance of societal transformation processes, property rights and the governance of natural resources, sustainability, and ecological economics. Kevin has a particular interest in why and how power relationships, institutions, and knowledge shape the governance of water and climate change.
Kevin is passionate about public engagement with research and his research impact. He has organized two successful drought walks in Birmingham and London, walking and discussing issues of drought and water scarcity with stakeholders at places where drought happened. A subsequent poster about the two walks won the Best Poster Award at the 2019 European Society for Ecological Economics conference. Moreover, he has contributed insightful blog articles for the University of Oxford's Science blog and his research on drought and water scarcity is now a lesson plan for Year 10 GCSE Geography students. He has also contributed ideas to a primary school storybook about a drought superhero.
Prior to joining the School of Geography and Environment, Kevin was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (2018-2021) and postdoctoral fellow (2015-2018) at the University of Oxford's Centre for Socio-Legal Studies where he remains an associate. Before coming to Oxford, he was a postdoctoral researcher and projects coordinator at the University of Oldenburg's Centre for Environmental and Sustainability Research (COAST) where he coordinated projects on sustainable bioenergy supply chains and marine energy potentials. In the summer of 2013, Kevin was visiting researcher at Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Before joining COAST, he was a doctoral researcher and lecturer in Ecological Economics at the University of Oldenburg's Department of Business Administration, Economics, and Law, researching the governance of climate change adaptation.
Kevin is the co-editor of the Palgrave Macmillan book series "Global Challenges in Water Governance". He is also a Research Fellow in the Earth System Governance Project, the world's largest network of social scientists interested in global environmental change and its governance challenges.
Kevin's ongoing research on water and climate change governance addresses questions of power relationships, the role of institutions, and knowledge. In the recent past his research was part of the multidisciplinary ENDOWS (Engaging diverse stakeholders and the public with outputs from the UK Drought and Water Scarcity program) and Marius (Governance of Water Scarcity and Drought in the UK) project that engaged legal scholars, economists, human geographers, hydrologists, and climate scientists in the development of a more risk-based approach to governance of drought.
Kevin was also the PI of a John Fell Fund-supported project on "Managing drought and water scarcity - Strategies and options for the UK's large industrial water consumers". His research into drought and water scarcity in the UK resulted in a monograph "Drought and water scarcity in the UK: Social science perspectives on governance, knowledge and outreach" published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2021.