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The UK must reach net zero by 2050, but the path to this target remains unclear and progress to date has been insufficient. There are concerns that our democratic institutions may be unable to develop effective climate policies which work for citizens. This has seen calls for increased public engagement in climate policy, often informed by the ideals of deliberative democracy. Experimentation with deliberative innovations have taken place in various local, national, and international contexts on policy challenges, such as climate change. The deliberative mini public (DMP) has emerged in this space, bringing together a representative sample of a population to hear expert opinion, discuss with peers, and produce recommendations on what they think should happen. Deliberation produces detailed and informed public opinion based on evidence and reason, transforming public preferences and indicating what the wider public might think had they had the time to deliberate on the issue. The use of DMPs has been significant in the UK, both at the local and national level. The systems turn in deliberative democracy has opened debates on DMP’s role in the wider democratic system, and their potential role to ‘signal’ the wider public towards issues which require more attention and debate. This research, therefore, undertakes a review of 30 UK DMPs on climate change from 2019- 2023. Their recommendations are aggregated to establish which climate policies are well-supported. Publicly available polling data from the same period is collected and compared to the findings of the DMP analysis to assess where DMPs and polls diverge and converge on support for climate policies. This reveals the ‘signals’ DMPs may send to the wider public and other political actors on climate. The research explores the role of the climate DMPs in the political system, discussing its strengths and weaknesses as a tool available to institutions.

Higher education is already profoundly digitalised. Students, academics, and university administrators routinely use digital technologies, many of which rely on data, including artificial intelligence. Universities aim to operate as data-powered organisations to support institutional efficiency and the personalisation of learning and student experience. These developments are occurring against the backdrop of university digital infrastructure moving to the cloud and the increasing role of ‘Big Tech’ in the sector. However, there are many unknowns about the aggregate impact of digitalisation on the sector, and hence, questions about potential risks and harms remain unanswered. Our approach in this collective piece is to reflect on particularly relevant and impactful dynamics of higher education digitalisation. We first identify assetisation as an emergent mode of governance linked to the digitalisation of HE, which brings new temporal, relational, and lock-in challenges for universities and their constituents. Second, we examine the macro-level structural transformation of higher education with the increasing role of Big Tech and Big EdTech. We conclude by discussing the consequences of the identified macro power dynamics.

University‐business collaborations (UBCs) are widely recognised as a key component within the sustainability effort, yet the literature on how we articulate the value which collaborations contribute towards a wider sustainable regional development agenda remains fragmented and disorganised, lacking synthesis and cumulativeness. Based on a recognised need to critically assess the state of the field, this paper presents a systematic review of a wide body of literature that seeks to evaluate the contribution of UBCs to sustainable regional development. Using a lens of place and knowledge, 131 articles are analysed and a framework is developed based on emerging categories of localism/universalism and pluralism/sovereignty. The framework provides a basis for both navigating approaches to evaluation, as well as enabling both researchers and practitioners to engage in more constructive discussions around the challenges and opportunities when evaluating UBCs in the wider context of place‐based government agendas for sustainable regional development.

Climate change, natural disasters and social unrest constantly threaten the role of the food system in ensuring adequate access to nutritious food for the population. Resilience is therefore emphasised in the food system in order to continue to function despite disruptions. However, due to the complex nature of the food system, multiple risks are easily transferred from one activity to another, which also exacerbates existing power imbalances between food system actors. Misaligned interests between actors and the food system make it difficult for governance to achieve intended effects, while efforts at the actor level do not necessarily lead to resilient systemic outcomes. Therefore, this thesis explores potential conflicts and coordination between the actor level and food system resilience through theoretical and empirical research in three interrelated papers and a discussion chapter. Paper 1 presents a literature review, aiming to answer the question of which actors contribute to food system resilience and how their efforts contribute to resilience during disruptions. The paper also summarises the supportive roles that help actors to affect the food system, and the underlying mechanisms that enable these actors to exert their influence. Paper 2 examines the resilience of restaurant organisations in Wuhan during the COVID-19 pandemic and explores the implications of organisational resilience for achieving sectoral and food system resilience. Paper 3 examines the effects of governance on the Chinese pork system and the trade-offs between resilience, sustainability and various internal dimensions of resilience, e.g. robustness, recovery and reorientation. Building on three preceding papers, the discussion chapter investigates the challenges of governance for food system resilience and explores strategies for enhancing resilience. Taken together, three papers and one discussion chapter provide insights into the overarching theme of the Ph.D. and offer theoretical and

Concerns have been raised that a focus on greenhouse gas removals (GGR) in climate models, scientific literature and other media might deter measures to mitigate climate change through reduction of emissions at source – the phenomenon of ‘mitigation deterrence’. Given the urgent need for climate action, any delay in emissions reduction would be worrying. We convened nine deliberative workshops to expose stakeholders to futures scenarios involving mitigation deterrence. The workshops examined ways in which deterrence might arise, and how it could be minimised. The deliberation exposed social and cultural interactions that might otherwise remain hidden. The paper describes narratives and ideas discussed in the workshops regarding political and economic mechanisms through which mitigation deterrence might occur, the plausibility of such pathways, and measures recommended to reduce the risk of such occurrence. Mitigation deterrence is interpreted as an important example of the ‘attraction of delay’ in a setting in which there are many incentives for procrastination. While our stakeholders accepted the historic persistence of delay in mitigation, some struggled to accept that similar processes, involving GGRs, may be happening now. The paper therefore also reviews the claims made by participants about mitigation deterrence, identifying discursive strategies that advocates of carbon removal might deploy to deflect concerns about mitigation deterrence. We conclude that the problem of mitigation deterrence is significant, needs to be recognised in climate policy, and its mechanisms better understood. Based on stakeholder proposals we suggest ways of governing GGR which would maximise both GGR and carbon reduction through other means.

China’s contribution to global expedited, deep decarbonisation is absolutely crucial, as the largest absolute emitter of any nation-state, while on many counts, such as regarding renewable energy or electric vehicle industries, it also leads the world. Yet its path to sustainable transition remains extremely challenging, not least due to the exceptional dependence if its economy on coal. This chapter examines these challenges over three steps, unfolding a comprehensive overview of the strategically plausible medium-term futures regarding China’s route beyond coal. First, it considers the deeply entrenched, even constitutive, dependence of the current political economy of the PRC on coal, illuminating just how difficult it will be to effect a rapid change of this status quo. Secondly, it then turns to a parallel but usually neglected concern that will prove crucial in determining how successfully, smoothly and quickly China moves beyond coal; namely, the dynamics of the construction of an entirely new energy system that successfully combines three key dimensions of innovation, in all of which China displays considerable dynamism: digitalization, renewable energy and storage/batteries (hence ‘DRS’). Finally, we consider how well China will be able to maintain this innovation dynamism, especially since innovation – and in these spheres specifically – is irreducibly and increasingly connected to issues of political tension, both domestically and internationally. Altogether, the chapter illuminates how China’s ‘innovation-as-politics’ towards sustainable transition currently sits uncertainly between a locked-in system of coal-dependent authoritarianism and an as-yet-unborn new system of world-leading ‘cleantech’, the realization of which will also need political reform.

Despite widespread recognition of the importance of place in entrepreneurship research, much less attention has been paid to the methodological challenges that inquiries into place presents. Understanding the relationship between place and entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly important as focus turns to sustainable entrepreneurship and as policy makers turn to ‘place-based’ approaches to regional sustainability challenges. This chapter provides insight one researcher’s experiences engaging stakeholders in discussions about the relationship between a place-based university programme for sustainability and local sustainability agendas. The chapter reveals the struggles experienced by both researcher and participants in articulating what places and the local region means to both individuals and to the programme. The findings provide an important insight into how researchers studying place need to be cognisant of the limitations and flexibility of language when engaging research participants in discussing the relationship between place, sustainability, and entrepreneurship.

Concerns have been raised that a focus on greenhouse gas removals (GGR) in climate models, scientific literature and other media might deter measures to mitigate climate change through reduction of emissions at source – the phenomenon of ‘mitigation deterrence’. Given the urgent need for climate action, any delay in emissions reduction would be worrying. We convened nine deliberative workshops to expose stakeholders to futures scenarios involving mitigation deterrence. The workshops examined ways in which deterrence might arise, and how it could be minimised. The deliberation exposed social and cultural interactions that might otherwise remain hidden. The paper describes narratives and ideas discussed in the workshops regarding political and economic mechanisms through which mitigation deterrence might occur, the plausibility of such pathways, and measures recommended to reduce the risk of such occurrence. Mitigation deterrence is interpreted as an important example of the ‘attraction of delay’ in a setting in which there are many incentives for procrastination. While our stakeholders accepted the historic persistence of delay in mitigation, some struggled to accept that similar processes, involving GGRs, may be happening now. The paper therefore also reviews the claims made by participants about mitigation deterrence, identifying discursive strategies that advocates of carbon removal might deploy to deflect concerns about mitigation deterrence. We conclude that the problem of mitigation deterrence is significant, needs to be recognised in climate policy, and its mechanisms better understood. Based on stakeholder proposals we suggest ways of governing GGR which would maximise both GGR and carbon reduction through other means.

Freeports are special economic zones, providing tax and customs benefits aimed at reducing economic friction and encouraging regional development. This place-based policy analysis of UK freeports draws upon qualitative interviews and deliberative workshops with leading industry, government, and civil society stakeholders in the two largest Freeport regions – Teesside and Liverpool. We find first, that purported tax, customs, and planning benefits are deemed less economically important than the agglomeration of innovation industries within a defined geographic boundary. Second, that stronger action on environmental and economic (in)justice is needed – Freeports could be a just transition mechanism if they can avoid capture by a ‘closed shop’ of industry players. Third, Freeports could facilitate cross-sectoral low-carbon economic regeneration, though they are subject to cycles of expectation, hype, and disappointment. We conclude that national policymakers must acknowledge the competing geographic and governance scales emerging within Freeport-hosting communities, as distributive environmental injustices between different locations remain broadly unaddressed. Finally, though cognisant of changes in political leadership on the horizon, we conclude that Freeports will increase the geographic spread of environmental injustice if this model of low-tax and low-regulation economics becomes a political norm within UK regional economic redevelopment strategy.