The world needs to quickly reduce its carbon emissions if it is to contain global warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees by 2100. Reducing personal consumption emissions, especially in high-income countries like Australia is an essential part of this picture. And yet, despite Australians’ high levels of climate change concern, their personal consumption emissions are the second highest in the world. Changing this status quo requires changes to infrastructure, policies, and social identities, encouraging people to personally connect to the issue of climate change, and confronting those who maintain the current system. Of these, changing social identities is one of the most challenging. This is partly because social groups use their practices to distinguish themselves from each other and so strategies must appeal to different and distinct social identities. This research project, through qualitative and quantitative investigations, articulates three distinct social identity change pathways and will explore each to better understand when and how they happen, and how practices spread from one social identity to another. This research will assist those seeking to include social identity strategies in integrated approaches for social transformation.

Zoom details

Meeting ID: 897 5494 6409
Password: 359796 https://anu.zoom.us/j/89754946409?pwd=Y3NnMnY3Wm5kRE1yL20wOUV1K3RYZz09

Sarah Boddington is interested in complexity and navigating solutions to complex problems. She comes to the PhD from 15 years working in international development, managing climate change projects in the Pacific, and livelihoods and earthquake recovery projects in Nepal. For three years, as Director Governance at DFAT, she created tools and systems to encourage politically and culturally informed approaches to development, exploring how outsiders can contribute to social change. Alongside the PhD, she is contributing to efforts to reduce carbon emissions, including as a member of ANU’s Below Zero working group on academic travel.

Thesis supervisory panel: Dr Rebecca Colvin (chair), Dr Samantha Stanley and Dr Sarah Milne.

This seminar will be hosted by Dr Rini Astuti.