Research Topic: Ethics, relationality and theories of change in climate activism.

Catherine-Ann's ESRC-funded doctoral research considers the conflicting timescapes and scales of the Anthropocene, and how climate activists negotiate these through contesting theories of change and ethical relationality in their political organising. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork based primarily with a local Extinction Rebellion (XR) group in Brighton on England's south coast, and previous and ongoing familiarity with XR, the thesis presents climate activism as a site of exploring what care means under climate change, resourced by social justice work, non-modern epistemologies, and faith/spirituality.

In 2020, Catherine-Ann was a member of LSE Anthropology’s research group on changing networks of care among the UK public in the Covid-19 pandemic, carrying out online interviews with individuals around the UK and collaborating on qualitative data analysis from surveys. Her particular interests focused on responses of faith groups to the pandemic and issues around education, schooling, and children categorised as vulnerable. The group's outputs included a report on 'good' and 'bad' deaths under lockdown published in BMJ Global Health, an LSE Monograph on the social foundations of recovery from the pandemic, and a blog series.

Catherine-Ann has also been an LSE student for her undergraduate and master’s degrees, training in Anthropology and Law before specialising in the anthropology of contemporary religion. Her MSc research on religion in the Anthropocene resulted in a publication through Anthropology of This Century.

Catherine-Ann also undertakes research roles outside academia, most recently co-authoring a report commissioned by the Atlantic Council's Climate Resilience Center on incorporating climate and environment themes into game design. 

Get in touch with Catherine-Ann over LinkedIn or Twitter:
LinkedIn
Twitter handle: @CatieAnnPeach

Supervisors: Michael W. Scott; Gisa Weszkalnys

Academic CV