Caitlin Hafferty – PhD student

BSc (Geography), MSc (Sustainability, Planning, and Environmental Policy), MSc (Social Science Research Methods - distinction)

Website: https://caitlinhafferty.blogspot.com/     Email: caitlinhafferty@connect.glos.ac.uk

Profile

Caitlin is a transdisciplinary PhD researcher with specialist interest in planning and environmental policy, stakeholder engagement, and technology. Her research explores the “best practice” use of information, communication, and collaboration technologies within the planning and environment sector; specifically how organisations (including planning and public bodies) engage the public and other stakeholders with environmental, planning, and policy decisions. She is currently in the third year of her research (2021/22), which is fully-funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and supervised by Dr Rob Berry (CCRI), Professor Scott Orford (Cardiff University), Dr Beth Brockett (Natural England), and Chris Short (CCRI). Her research broadly aims to:

• Contribute to knowledge and understanding of the use of digital tools for public and stakeholder engagement, making recommendations for their “best practice” use within the planning and environment sector.
• Help enhance environmental decision-making processes so that they are more effective and inclusive of a diversity of voices, promoting more sustainable outcomes.

Impact, engagement, and outreach are central to Caitlin’s research approach. This involves facilitating collaboration with and between diverse stakeholders to help generate evidence-based outputs which have tangible benefits for policy, practice, and wider society. Recent activity has included providing and sharing expert knowledge with UK government ministerial departments and agencies, UK-based and international organisations, and expert committees for science-policy communication. She has completed a 4-month UKRI Policy Internship in the Welsh Government, using statistical modelling to explore national indicators for well-being. Caitlin is an active member of several academic/professional committees, including the Participatory Geographies Research Group (PYGYRG) of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), and Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) Young Academics Network. She has previously served on the Council (Board of Trustees) of the RGS-IBG as the elected Chair of their Postgraduate Forum (2019/20).