Communities at the heart of tackling climate change and sustainability

Author: Dr Laura Fogg-Rogers, Associate Professor for Engineering in Society

While you’ll find me in the School of Engineering, I’m a social psychologist and science communicator. I study people and their engagement with technology.

That means that most of my work is done with groups and communities. Because we humans are social creatures. We want to live and thrive together. And I believe that communities are the answer to the big questions of today. I’m really focused on how we can make sure that communities stay together, stay connected and stay resilient, so that we can live with our changing times.

Dr Laura Fogg-Rogers, Associate Professor for Engineering in Society

Communities driving change

I encourage communities to tell us what their problems are and what they need us to work on. Naturally, this has taken me a lot into the area of sustainability and climate change – and how we can work together, solve problems and make a real world, on-the-ground difference.

Because yes, I’m driven to make a difference. Action is everything right now. And action happens within our communities. But we have to inspire action and show that it’s possible for communities to affect change.

Be what you can see

For instance, some of my work has been about minority and underrepresented groups working in technology and engineering. So, there’s this classic phrase: you can’t be what you can’t see. And that’s really important. Representation matters. We need to show that different people, diverse people, are working in this area and making a real difference. Seeing that there are role models doing this right now is so important. It’s inspiring. And we want to excite the next generation and show them that they can too.

We’re also active in policy development. We’re working with local councils to show them how they can embed citizen-led climate ideas and action into policy. How we can connect awesome community projects with the policies that are going through right now. Again, a lot of this comes back to getting community voices heard, and making sure that there’s diversity and representation at all levels.

We are all the difference

As a social psychologist, I’m all about groups. As I said at the start, we’re social creatures. We want to look out for each other. My passion, my work, is to support communities to come together and make a difference to each other – and the environment we all live in.