It is with great sadness that we share news of the death of Professor Bridget Hutter on 10 April 2023. Further information can be found here.
Professor Bridget Hutter was Professor of Risk Regulation at LSE. She studied sociology at the Universities of London and Oxford (D.Phil) and had held appointments at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford, Jesus College, Oxford, and 2000-2010 was Director of the ESRC Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR).
Professor Hutter's teaching and research interests centred on risk regulation; social control; the governance of economic life; resilience and natural disasters; risk based regulation; and the regulation of food, the environment and occupational health and safety. She was author of numerous publications on the subject of risk regulation. Several of these are listed in the Publications section below.
Professor Hutter completed a monograph Regulatory Crisis: Interactions Between Disaster, Crisis And Risk Regulation (CUP, 2017) with Professor Lloyd-Bostock and an edited book Risk, Resilience, Inequality and Environmental Law (Edward Elgar 2017). Her recent research was engaging issues of risk regulation and resilience flooding strategies and inequality.
External activities
Professor Hutter was a regular visitor to RegNet at the Australian National University and had also been a visitor at the Departments of Sociology and Law Melbourne University, the Chinese University Hong Kong, the China Law Centre, University Amsterdam, was appointed Genest Global Faculty Member, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, 2011 and in April/May 2011 held a Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. She was an alumnus of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Network of Global Agenda Councils, formerly she was a member of the WEF Councils on Catastrophic Risk and Council on the Mitigation of Natural Disasters. She was a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and on their Policy Working Party, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Bridget regularly met with members of the regulatory agencies, business representatives and consumer groups. She was a Fellow of the Food Standards Authority Australia and New Zealand; a member of the Environment Agency's Long-Term Investment Scenarios Development Group; had given advice to BALPA and the Civil Aviation Authority on the reporting culture amongst pilots; the Environment Agency on compliance and small businesses; HSE and the Löfstedt Review of health and safety legislation, on compliance research and regulatory impact; the Pennington Inquiry into the 2005 South Wales E.coli outbreak on food regulation; the Pitt Review Team on regulation and natural disasters; and various regulators on risk-based regulation. In 2010 she was appointed Trustee and Board Member of the think tank The Strategic Society Centre.
Member of Regulation & Governance Editorial Board. Editor British Journal of Sociology (2002-2008) and a Senior Research Associate of the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR) at LSE.
Watch the video made by Professor Hutter for the Big Ideas series of films, a collaboration between LSE and The Independent (2009): Bridget Hutter: Risk regulation has gone too far.
Read the REF2014 Impact Case Study Summary: Preventing disease and death from food-borne pathogens and Resources: Bridget Hutter
Watch a video of Professor Hutter discussing how LSE research helped formulate more effective food hygiene regulations (December 2014):
Regulating Risk: Using Social Science Research to Improve Food Safety
Gearty Grilling: Bridget Hutter on managing risk.
For full details of Professor Hutter's publications, research projects and curriculum vitae, please see her website bridgethutter.net.
Selected Publications
Books
Regulatory Crisis: Negotiating the Consequences of Risk, Disasters and Crises (with Sally Lloyd-Bostock). Cambridge University Press (2017)
Risk, Resilience, Inequality and Environmental Law (editor) (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017)
Managing Food Safety and Hygiene: Governance and Regulation as Risk Management, Edward Elgar (2011)
Anticipating Risks and Organising Risk Regulation, [editor], Cambridge University Press (2010)
Organizational Encounters with Risk, edited with Michael Power, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2005)
Regulation and Risk: Occupational Health & Safety on the Railways, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2001)
A Reader in Environmental Law, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1999)
Compliance: Regulation & Environment, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1997)
The Reasonable Arm of the Law?: The Law Enforcement Procedures of Environmental Health Officers, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1988)
Articles
Hutter, Bridget M. (2016) 'A Risk Regulation Perspective on Regulatory Excellence.' In: C Coglianese (ed.) Achieving Regulatory Excellence. Brookings Institution Press. A version of the paper can be read here.
Hutter, Bridget M. (2014) 'Lessons for Government in Minimising Risk: What can the public service learn from the private sector?' In: Boston, Wanna, Pritchard and Lipski (eds.) Future-Proofing the State. ANU Press.
Hutter, Bridget M. and Lloyd-Bostock, Sally (2013) 'Risk, interest groups and the definition of crisis: the case of volcanic ash'. British Journal of Sociology, 64 (3). 383-404.
Hutter, Bridget M. (2011) 'Understanding the new regulatory governance: business perspectives.' Law & policy, 33 (4). pp. 459-476.
Hutter, Bridget M. (2011) 'Negotiating social, economic and political environments: compliance with regulation within and beyond the state.' In: Parker, Christine and Nielsen, Vibeke L., (eds.) Explaining compliance: business responses to regulation. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK.
Hutter, Bridget M. (2010) 'Visualizations of risk and governance: some observations on change.' In: Chan, Raymond K.H. and Takahashi, Mutsuko and Wang, Lillian Lih-rong, (eds.) Risk and public policy in East Asia. Ashgate
Hutter, Bridget M. (2010) 'Surveying empirical legal research: Occupational safety and health.' In: Cane, Peter and Kritzer, Herbert, (eds.) The Oxford handbook of empirical legal research. Oxford University Press
Hutter, B.M. (2009) 'The role of regulation in mitigating the risks of natural disasters' in Kunreuther, H and Useem, M (eds) Learning from Catastrophes: Strategies for Reaction and Response, Wharton School Publishing
Hutter, Bridget M. (2008) 'Special issue on 'Risk regulation and health' [editor]. Health, risk and society 10, no. 1.
Hutter, Bridget M.; Jones, C. (2007) 'From government to governance: external influences on business risk management.' International Journal of Regulation and Governance 1, no. 1, pp. 27-45.
Hutter, Bridget M. (2006) 'Risk regulation and management.' In Risk in social science. Edited by Taylor-Gooby, P.; Zinn, J. Oxford University Press, pp. 202-277.
Hutter, Bridget M.; Jones, C. (2006) 'Business Risk Management Practices: The Influence of State Regulatory Agencies and Non-State Sources.' CARR Discussion Paper Series, DP 41: June 2006. CARR, LSE.
Hutter, Bridget M. (2006) 'The Role of Non-State Actors in Regulation', CARR Discussion Paper Series, DP 37.
Hutter, B.M. (2004) 'Risk Management and Governance' in Eliadis, P, Hill, MM and Howlett, M (eds.) Designing Government: From Instruments to Governance, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. See also 'The Attractions of Risk-based Regulation: accounting for the emergence of risk ideas in regulation,' 2005, Bridget M. Hutter, CARR Discussion Paper Series, DP 33.
Hutter, Bridget M. (2001) 'Is Enforced Self-Regulation a Form of Risk Taking?: The Case of Railway Health and Safety' International Journal of the Sociology of Law 29: 379-400.
Hutter, Bridget M. and Dodd, N. (2000) 'Geopolitics and the Regulation of Economic Life', with N. Dodd, Law & Policy, 22:1: 1-24.