In category: Blog

For Nnennaya Nwali, questions of energy, environment, and justice are never abstract. Growing up in Nigeria, she saw how the wealth of natural resources often translated into harm rather than benefit to the local people, particularly in the Niger Delta, where oil extraction has left a deep and lasting mark on communities. From early on, […]

And so a fourth Access Assembly has come and gone, and a fourth Evaluation Report has been completed. Why go to all that effort to evaluate the event? To collect different types of data before and afterwards? To carefully look across that data with multiple eyes, to produce findings and come to final conclusions and […]

As an ACCESS Knowledge Exchange Fellow, I contributed to the design, execution, and analysis of a survey and interviews on interdisciplinary working and the benefits of environmental social science, as well as supporting key project outputs like the annotated bibliography, literature review, and the Environmental Social Science kNowledge Exchange Map of Opportunities (ESS NEMO). Being […]

I live in a new town in Devon called Cranbrook. There was much derision about the location of the development, with many people concerned about it being built on a floodplain. However, that is not the case. Green spaces and country parks have been kept free of development, allowing the floodplains to do their job […]

Southampton has a long history of grassroots environmental action, from tackling air pollution to the climate crisis. This comes in part from needing to address the huge impact of its port and airport, but is mainly down to the individuals and grassroots organisations who have worked hard to raise the profile of community voices and […]

“I am not an EDI person!” I exclaimed in a call with a potential invitee who I believe will not only enrich conversations at the ACCESS Assembly 2025 but is someone I would love to meet and get to know. She laughs, and soon responds, “I know what you mean”. Hello, I am Jaya. I […]

The beach holds a special place in my heart. Gazing over the sea, listening to the sound of the breaking waves and feeling the sand between my toes inspires awe, instils calm, releases tension and provides a transitional space for wellbeing, recreation and many other of our human needs and desires. The beach is a […]

Fryent Country Park in northwest London has over 100 hectares of rolling fields and small woods, divided in two by a busy road. This is the park where in June 2020, two women were murdered. The park is nestled in the London Borough of Brent, a borough celebrated for being one of the most culturally […]

What does walking mean to you? Is it an opportunity to relax or something you have to do? Does it give you space to mull over challenging work problems or do you focus purely on enjoying the nature around you? Walking means many things to many people and in our second ACCESS College retreat a […]

Perhaps evolving out of an early research focus on the culture of estuarine landscapes, I have always had an interest in liminal places and in-between spaces. In my current role as an ACCESS KEIF (Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fellow), I spend much of my time trying to make sense of the critical space in-between [social] […]