The Planning and Environment Research Group (PERG) aims to further research into the interrelated topics of environmental politics and policy, land use planning, environmental planning, and sustainability.
The Group consists of over 900 academics, practitioners and professionals with an interest or involvement in research in these areas.
PERG recognises the critical role of research in informing the development of more effective environmental policy and land use planning practice and as making a key contribution to the pursuit of more sustainable forms of development. In this light, a particular objective of PERG is to promote policy relevant research, and to foster closer contacts and collaboration between academic researchers and practitioners.
There is a strong geographical perspective to our work, but multi-disciplinarity is fundamental to our areas of research interest and the group seeks to develop links with researchers from a wide range of disciplines engaged with similar issues. Although the work of PERG has traditionally focused on environments in the ‘north’, we are currently also seeking to create connections with researchers addressing similar issues in the context of the global ‘south’. We have a commitment to promoting diversity and equality, and to enabling dialogue and the exchange of experience across national borders.
Chair: Dr Frances Fahy
Secretary: Dr Sara Fuller
Treasurer: Dr Mike Goodman
Newsletter
2010 PERG newsletter (PDF)
2009 PERG Newsletter (PDF)
2008 PERG Newsletter (PDF)
2007 PERG Newsletter (PDF)
Call for submissions - Masters Dissertation Prize 2011
The prize is £100 and is awarded for the best dissertation on any issue relating to environmental planning, policy and governance.
The dissertations should usually be 15,000 – 20,000 words and should be submitted by the student's department, along with a copy of the appropriate departmental dissertation regulations, to either Susan Buckingham, Anna Davies or Michael Mason (contact details below).
Dissertations can only be accepted in hard copy and please also include an email contact address for the student. A department may not submit more than one entry. Closing date for entries is 31st January 2011.
Professor Susan Buckingham
Centre for Human Geography
Brunel University
Uxbridge, UB8 3PH
Professor Anna Davies
Department of Geography
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin 2
Ireland
Dr Michael Mason
Department of Geography and the Environment
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
PERG Postgraduate Dissertation Prize 2010
The award of the PERG 2010 Prize for the best Masters Dissertation in the field of Planning and Environment is given to Khairunnisa Haji Ibrahim at the Department of Geography, University of Leicester, for the dissertation Assessing proboscis monkey habitat along Sungai Brunei, Brunei Darussalam, using remote sensing and GIS. The dissertation used remote sensing to develop new assessment techniques for habitat destruction, showing both great skill in the execution of this task but also sensitivity to the limits and challenges of the technology. Its exceptional achievement is to marry this technical ability to a sophisticated appreciation of how this kind of technical approach to conservation fits in more broadly with the social, economic and political challenges.
A commendation is awarded to James Palmer at the Department of Geography, Cambridge for the dissertation: Biofuels: Easy win or hard solution? A case study of agenda setting and policy rationalisation in UK energy and climate change policy. This project provides a magisterial explication of what are quite confusing literatures concerning environmental policy making, to build an interesting theoretical case. It also gives a quite exceptionally detailed account of its methodology.
A commendation is awarded to Richard A Howard at the University of Cardiff for the dissertation: Is an 80% reduction in emissions in the UK and Wales by 2050 compatible with economic growth. This dissertation is a very well written, timely and accessible analysis of economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions which raises significant issues concerning the achievement of government CO2 targets.