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Environment and Sustainability

There is no more important area of research than sustainability, but also none more complicated. It isn’t just about climate change, ecosystems and pollution. It’s about understanding the world around us in its entirety. We were one of the first universities to realise that mapping out a sustainable future requires multidisciplinary collaboration by experts across a range of fields. This approach remains fundamental to our research and teaching.

Although students will be registered in a specific department, we encourage supervision arrangements across departments to promote interdisciplinarity.

Taught programme

Research Environment

Uniting all our activities in this field is the commitment to developing a collaborative, well-equipped research community that generates action-oriented, policyrelevant responses to long-term environmental and social issues.

As one of the principal international centres for research in this area, we support a network of academic staff, research officers, post-doctoral research fellows, PhD students and visiting academics. Our research receives strong support from research councils and funding bodies in the UK and abroad, allowing us to provide you with excellent research facilities, whether your specialism is in engineering, economics, law, psychology or management.

Key Research Areas

  • Sustainable systems and development
  • Social research on sustainability
  • Policy, strategy and governance
  • Lifestyles and resource consumption
  • Environmental psychology
  • Sustainable tourism
  • Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES)
  • The Hospitality and Food Management Group (HFMG)
  • Tourism and Events Management Research Group
  • Labour, workplace and the environment

Research Centres and Groups

Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES)

The Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES) is an internationally acclaimed centre of excellence on sustainable development. It takes a multidisciplinary approach to the analysis of sustainable systems, integrating strong, engineering-based approaches with insights from the social sciences to develop action-oriented, policy-relevant responses to long-term environmental and social issues. The call for the skills and approach embodied in CES has never been greater. Research in CES is based around three interrelated themes.

Sustainable Systems: Tools for Analysis and Design

This theme builds on the longstanding strengths of CES in environmental systems analysis. The intention is to further develop a range of analytic and modelling tools and techniques for sustainability, informed by the conceptual and empirical research of the Social Research on Sustainability Group. Expertise in established techniques such as life cycle assessment, value chain analysis and industrial ecology are built upon to address the strong business and policy interest in areas such as carbon accounting (footprinting), and research will expand into a range of newer approaches such as dynamic simulation, agent-based modelling and approaches to uncertainty.
Social Research on Sustainability: Developing Concepts and Themes
This theme develops the strong existing interdisciplinary social science research base within CES and across the University. The theme advances conceptual thinking on sustainability and strengthens the base of empirical evidence, underpinning research on sustainable systems. Drawing on increasing interest in policy and business in ‘behaviour change’ and the social aspects of sustainability, the theme encompasses economic and institutional aspects of sustainability as well as the social and psychological dimensions of environmentally relevant behaviour. It aims to extend and build upon existing links within the Faculty and across the University (in particular with the Departments of Psychology and Sociology and the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law).

Policy, Strategy and Governance: Implementing Sustainability

This theme applies the tools which are the focus of the Sustainable Systems Group and the sustainability concepts explored in the Social Research on Sustainability Group to develop specific approaches for corporate strategy and governance, and public policy. The emphasis is on developing practical approaches to support decision makers and policy analysts confronted with complex issues. At international, national and sector levels, these issues include mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. At the corporate level, this means helping companies to develop positive responses to changing demands from both regulators and the public.

www.surrey.ac.uk/CES

The Hospitality and Food Management Group (HFMG)

HFMG conducts research into management policies, procedures and processes that lead to enhanced performance, both for large firms and SMEs competing in all sectors of the hospitality and food industry. HFMG seeks to understand consumer behaviour in our target industries and thereby identify successful strategies, core capabilities and best practices that lead to competitive advantage. Research to date has focused on key concepts such as internationalisation, productivity, quality, service, value, entrepreneurial and consumer behaviour. HFMG contributes to the understanding of these concepts through both the development of underpinning theory and empirical studies, using a wide variety of appropriate research methods and tools.

www.surrey.ac.uk/shtm/research/hospitalityandfood

Tourism and Events Management Research Group

Tourism research at Surrey was commended for its high quality in the last national Research Assessment Exercise and includes a high proportion of work that was ranked as world class. The research group includes academics who are international leaders in their fields, and the leading international research journal – Annals of Tourism Research – is edited by Professor John Tribe who leads the Surrey Tourism and Events Management Research Group. We have a thriving community of PhD students and welcome applications in most areas of tourism, but our particular specialisms include: education and theory, sustainability and ethics, human resources and employment, demand modelling and forecasting, culture and heritage, visuals and visuality, social tourism, innovation and risk, and mobility and migration.

www.surrey.ac.uk/shtm/research/strc

Career Development

Opportunities for experts in this field are continually growing, and include providing expertise for consultancies, water or energy utilities, central and local government, regulatory bodies, relief agencies and international organisations.

Examples of positions achieved by our students after earning their postgraduate qualification with us:

  • Hewlett-Packard – Head of Environmental Compliance for Europe, Middle East and Africa
  • Buro Happold – Senior Engineer in Sustainability and Alternative Technologies Group
  • Thames Water – Research Engineer

The EngD provides the opportunity to develop a network within industry which is a great  foundation for things to come.

Jade-Ashlee Cox
Engineering Doctorate (EngD), Sustainability for Engineering and Energy Systems (SEES)

The SEES Engineering Doctorate at the University of Surrey complements my degree in Physical Geography from the University of Durham and MSc in Environmental Technology (Distinction) from Imperial College London.

My main motivation for undertaking the EngD was due to its direct engagement with waste management, environmental service firms and local government, in which I intend to pursue a career. The importance of waste resource management and making it effective is, in my opinion, the biggest challenge of today’s society. The EngD is a careful balance between working in industry and academia. It is an invaluable experience to gain the skills that will be required later in your career, whilst studying a subject in which you wish to become an expert and that you thoroughly enjoy.

The EngD provides the opportunity to develop a network within industry which is a great  foundation for things to come. Coupled with the support and academic genius of the University, your project can deliver bigger and better results, as opposed to working in isolation.

Supervisors and support staff at the University make this an entirely enjoyable experience, even when times get hard. Supervisors both in industry and academia are enthusiastic about the projects and provide an excellent level of support as well as knowledge.

The EngD will enhance my opportunities and increase the level to which I can go individually, as well as in the industry I have grown to love. Working within local government has made me wish to pursue an environmental career within the higher echelons of the civil service which I believe will only be possible through the experience I will have gained through the EngD.