School of Earth and Environment

Dr James Porter

Research Fellow

Telephone number: 9.160
Email address: earjpo@leeds.ac.uk
Room: 31635

Biography

James is a human geographer who specialises in science and technology studies, risk/uncertainty management and the institutional politics of producing, and in turn, using technical knowledge. He has recently taken up an ICAD (Advancing knowledge systems in climate adaptation decisions) Research Fellowship on a EU-funded project, working alongside Professor Suraje Dessai, at the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds.

Qualifications

  • PhD in Human Geography and Science and Technology Studies (King's College London)
  • MRes (Dist.) in Environment, Society & Politics (King's College London)
  • BA (First) in Geography (King's College London)

Memberships/Fellowships

  • Royal Geographical Society
  • Association of American Geographers
  • Institution of Civil Engineers

Research Interests

James has a wide range of interests but they mostly centre around the way different kinds of science come to be shaped, and in turn, shape different kinds of policy, for example, in the context of co-producing flood risk science and spatial planning. His PhD traced the origins, production and use of the Environment Agency's flood risk maps and how decisions over what to include (or exclude) from the modelling reveal various practical considerations, at once technical and institutional-political, which affect the flood outlines produced. That is, accurate science is not always the most political defensible science. His interests, therefore, touch on the social studies of science or scientists, particularly in relation to the institutional production and use of flood risk and climate knowledges; the politics involved in making evidence-based decision-making tools "work"; and the interdisciplinary dynamics at play in shaping preferred forms of research collaboration, especially in the life sciences. As part of the ICAD project, he will be tracing the way climate knowledge develops, and by extension changes, as it travels across different production sites to where it is eventually applied. How, and why, for example, does climate knowledge come to take a particular form in decision-making? Focusing on the key role played by consultancies in the construction, verification, and interpretation of climate information, this project seeks to understand what effect, if any, do these actors have on the kind of climate knowledge produced.

Publications

PORTER, J.; Dessai, S. and Tang, S. (2012) Climate Scenarios, Decision-Making and Uncertainty: Do Users Need What They Want? Policy and Practice Note 1, Project ICAD.

PORTER, J. (Accepted) Are Two Heads Better Than One? Changing Dynamics of Collaboration in the Modern World, Science as Culture.

PORTER, J. and Demeritt, D. (Accepted) Flood Risk Management, Mapping and Planning: The Institutional Politics of Decision-Support in England, Environment & Planning A. DOI: 10.1068/a44660

PORTER, J. (2012) The Stuff of Politics? A Book Review of Braun and Whatmore's Political Matter, Cultural Geographies, 19, 417-418. DOI: 10.1177/1474474012436484

PORTER, J.; Williams, C.; Wainwright, S.; and Cribb, A. (Online First) On Being a (Modern) Scientist: Risks of Public Engagement in the Interspeies Embryo Debate, New Genetics & Society. DOI: 10.1080/14636778.2012.687138

PORTER, J. (2012) End of Project Report - On Being a (Modern) Scientist: Risks of Public Engagement in the Interspecies Embryo Debate, Wellcome Trust. http://www.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/202251/Porter-2012-interspecies-embryo-project-report.pdf

PORTER, J. (2011) Funding Review Report - London and Brighton Translational Research Ethics Centre, Progress Review for the Wellcome Trust. http://www.brunel.ac.uk/sss/research/research-centres/sociology-and-communications/cbas/labtec

PORTER, J. (2010) The Extreme Flood Outline: Co-Producing Flood Risk Mapping and Spatial Planning in England, PhD Thesis (unpublished), King's College London.

PORTER, J. (2009) Lost in Translation: The Story of Consistency in Managing the "Risk" of Flood Maps, King's Risk Symposium.