Laurie Kerr

Email:  L.Kerr@uea.ac.uk

ORCiD

Profile

I graduated from UEA with a BSc (hons) in Ecology with a Year in Europe (spent at the Institut de Géographie Alpine in Grenoble, France) in 2014.  My undergraduate dissertation investigated ‘the effects of urban park characteristics on insect community composition’, and sparked an interest in, and understanding of, the role of nature in the city.  In 2017, I completed a Master’s degree in Environment and Society Studies, with a specialisation in Local Environmental Change and Sustainable Cities, at Radboud University in the Netherlands.  This interdisciplinary Master’s degree helped develop my understanding of the necessity of socio – technical transitions towards a sustainable and low-carbon society, and I gained an appreciation of integrating both natural science and social science perspectives.  My Master’s thesis investigated the role of guiding visions in the development of green infrastructure in two European Green Capital Award winning cities, as examples of best practices.  

Current Research

 'The potential of consumer facing, smart city technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions'

My PhD forms part of a wider project investigating digitally-enabled consumer innovations which can potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions if adopted at scale.

In particular, I aim to explore the concept of ‘Smart Cities’, where a smart city is defined as a city where information technology is used to address a problem; in this case the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

The next steps will be identifying consumer – facing innovations herein, determining how people interact with these innovations, and exploring what this could potentially mean for greenhouse gas emissions.  Next, the key questions asking:  Who are the early adopters?  What value propositions do they gain from engaging with this innovation?  What is the diffusion process from these early adopter groups to the wider population?  will be explored, with a view to understand how these disruptive innovations at the fringes of the mass market can be mainstreamed, potentially reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Publications

2016: Sales, K. Kerr, L., Gardner, J. 2016. Factors influencing epiphytic moss and lichen distribution within Killarney National Park. Bioscience Horizons 9:hzw008. DOI: 10.1093/biohorizons/hzw008

Supervisory team and Research Group

Supervisor: Dr Charlie Wilson  

Social Influence and disruptive Low Carbon Inovations