Dr Nick Kirsop-Taylor

My career has focused on working in the field of environment and climate governance in the public, voluntary and now higher education sectors.

I am an environmental governance scholar with a particular research interest in how the state and bureaucracy contribute towards and participate in environmental governance; and in particular, contestation and conflict in environmental governance. I co-authored the (2022) Edward Elgar Handbook of the Governance of Sustainable Development and am currently writing my first monograph – Governance in the age of Nature Restoration (Amsterdam University Press – due 2025). 

`I am deeply engaged with sustainability and governance facing projects and roles for the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Exeter, for example, I was the founding Director of the Systems Thinking Practitioner Degree Apprenticeship at Exeter, served as Deputy-Director of Policy@Exeter, and am currently the Chair of Sustainability for the faculty (2023-2026). The University of Exeter is a nationally and globally leading institution in the research and education about nature and climate, and we have an ambitious 2030 net-zero commitment to meet. I see my role as the Faculty Champion is to support and advocate for our faculty’s journey of change towards this target, but more widely towards realising our institutional ambitions to become the leading higher education institution in the UK for environment and climate research and education.

I am open to approaches from potential PhD students on subjects related to my research agenda. In particular, doctoral research situated within public policy and administration theory in addressing environmental and climate challenges/questions.