Katy Wright
Contact & links
Biography
Katy Wright is Associate Professor of Sociology & Social Policy at the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on communities and the role of the public in contexts including infrastructure planning, emergency governance, climate change and environmental transformation. She has led and collaborated on a range of interdisciplinary research projects, working with partners across academia, policy, practice and the cultural sector to explore complex societal and environmental challenges.
Her work is interdisciplinary, and she has collaborated extensively with researchers across the natural sciences, arts and humanities. Her research has been published in leading international journals and has been recognised with awards including the 2026 Sage Prize for Innovation and Excellence for her work with Professor Sarah Irwin on everyday climate conversations. She is committed to collaborative research that connects academic knowledge with policy, practice and public engagement.
Katy’s research examines how people make sense of complex social and environmental challenges, and how public values, experiences and everyday practices shape responses to change. She has particular expertise in qualitative and participatory research methods and has worked across a wide range of settings, from local communities and voluntary organisations to national policy contexts.
She is currently leading an interdisciplinary scoping study of a large-scale tree planting initiative carried out in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, in the 1990s, tracing the longer-term social, environmental and policy trajectories of environmental interventions. She is also Co-Investigator on an EU-funded Driving Urban Transitions project investigating the relationship between mobility and access to essential provisioning systems from the perspective of young people aged 18–25.
Research
- Environmental sociology
- Climate change and environmental transformation
- Time and temporality
- Environmental pasts and futures
- Biodiversity loss and extinction
- Public participation and engagement
- Communities, place and resilience
- Infrastructure, planning and governance
Research methods and approaches
- Qualitative research
- Interdisciplinary research
- Mixed methods research
- Participatory and co-produced research
- Ethnography
- Interviews and focus groups
- Walking methods
- Policy research and analysis
- Longitudinal research
What are you looking for
I am especially interested in collaborations that combine social research with environmental science, ecology and geography, as well as with colleagues working in archives, film archives, literature, visual arts and creative practice. I am interested in how diverse forms of evidence, storytelling and cultural memory can be brought together to understand environmental change, place, memory and the long-term trajectories of environmental interventions.
I welcome opportunities to develop innovative, cross-disciplinary research that connects academic research with policy, practice and public engagement.
Research discipline: Social Sciences
Cohort year: 2024
Programme: Challenge Networks