This year’s Assembly was held on Wednesday 17 and Thursday 18 June 2026 at the University of Exeter’s Streatham Campus.
As our fifth and final Assembly, this year’s event was our biggest yet, with around 160 environmental social scientists (and invited non-ESS guests) from across academia, policy and the third sector coming together for two days of thinking, connecting and network building.
There was a greater focus on international perspectives this year with keynotes from Prof. Julian Agyeman (Tufts, USA) and Prof. Yacob Mulugetta (UCL, African Institute for Sustainable Energy and Systems Analysis) and a discussion panel with Prof. Julie MacArthur (Royal Roads, Canada), Dr Saurabh Arora (University of Sussex) and Prof. Hsing-Sheng Tai and Prof. John Chung-En Liu (National Taiwan University).
This year’s themed sessions were on negotiating boundaries: between policy and academia – with presentations from our ACCESS Task Force leads and representatives from the Policy and Practice Working Group, and between disciplines and sectors – with presentations from the MOSSEPP (Mainstreaming of Social Sciences in Environmental Policy and Practice) Project and the ACCESS/IES Interdisciplinary Working project, followed by a panel discussion.
There was also an emphasis on intersectionality at this year’s Assembly, with ACAI (Advisory Community to ACCESS on Intersectionality) supporting the Assembly steering group in helping to broaden the range of voices represented at the event and as well as delivering a session on Ecomodernism.
Leadership College Fellows delivered a discussion on environmental leadership. And we heard presentations from some of our Flex Fund projects: Environmentally Just Ai, Building Sustainability on a Foundation of Care, British Muslims and Pro-Environmental Values, and Unlocking the Power of Youth to Deliver Equity in Net Zero Governance.
View the Assembly 2026 programme and full list of speakers, discussants and chairs below or here.
Or scroll down to watch replays of many of the Assembly 2026 sessions.
