Cross-faculty water researcher appointed

12/16/2005 11:26:44

Lancaster University’s Centre for Sustainable Water Management and the Department of Sociology have appointed a cross-faculty research fellow.

Dr Will Medd will develop research that looks at issues such as water shortage, consumption and demand from a social science perspective.

The two-year appointment was funded by the University Research Committee's Enterprise Zone and supported by additional funding from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and Lancaster Environment Centre. The Centre for Sustainable Water Management, based in LEC, and the Department of Sociology have been jointly awarded the funding.

Dr Will Medd said: “Climate change, extreme weather events and forecasts of future water consumption are generating demand for interdisciplinary research. It is increasingly apparent that water management is not just a matter of managing physical and biological resources: social, cultural, political and economic considerations also determine possibilities for change and intervention.

“Public and private sector organisations are now positioning themselves to acquire and fund social scientific research on a significant scale. Relatively few universities and research providers are capable of responding, but Lancaster is one.”

The Centre for Sustainable Water Management (CSWM) at Lancaster University seeks to deliver cross-disciplinary science in water-related areas to build solutions to current and future problems such as flooding, diffuse agricultural pollution, and the medium-term impact of climate change on water resource distribution and water quality.

The Department of Sociology is one of only a handful of 6* sociology departments in the UK - the highest national research rating. Sociology at Lancaster is home to one of the leading and most exciting teams of sociologists and cultural analysts in the UK.