Professor Alice Mah
- Professor in Urban and Environmental Studies (Urban Studies & Social Policy)
email:
Alice.Mah@glasgow.ac.uk
pronouns:
She/her/hers
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8183-2527Biography
Alice Mah is Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies at the University of Glasgow. Prior to this she was Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick and Principal Investigator of the European Research Council-funded Starting Grant “Toxic Expertise: Environmental Justice and the Global Petrochemical Industry.” Her research and teaching contributions focus on toxic pollution and environmental justice; just and sustainable transformations; and anti-colonial ecological alternatives and futures.
Alice is the author of Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation (2023, Duke University Press); Plastic Unlimited: How Corporations are Fuelling the Ecological Crisis (2022, Polity Press); Toxic Truths: Environmental Justice and Citizen Science in a Post-Truth Age (with Thom Davies, 2020, University of Manchester Press); Port Cities and Global Legacies (2014, Palgrave Macmillan), and Industrial Ruination, Community, and Place (2012, University of Toronto Press), winner of the 2013 British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Memorial Prize. Her wide-ranging interdisciplinary research has been published in leading academic journals and received awards, including the Philip Leverhulme Prize and the SAGE Prize for Innovation/Excellence.
Research interests
- environmental justice
- just and sustainable transformations
- urban inequalities and toxic pollution
- climate justice and decarbonisation
- deindustrialization and post-industrial transformation
- sociology of the petrochemical, plastics, and fossil fuel industries
- corporate sustainability
- degrowth and ecological alternatives/futures
Research groups
Grants
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Alice is currently a Co-Investigator on the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded partnership project “Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time” (PI Steven High), $2.5 million CAD overall (2020-2027)
Previous externally funded research projects:
Philip Leverhulme Prize- Principal Investigator, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, £100,000 (2018-2023)
European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant, “Toxic Expertise: Environmental Justice and the Global Petrochemical Industry”- Principal Investigator, €1.5 million (2015-2020)
ESRC Connected Communities Imagine Project: “The Social, Historical, Cultural and Democratic Context of Civic Engagement.” Role: Co-I, (PI: Professor Kate Pahl, University of Sheffield), £1.2 million overall (2013-2017)
Supervision
I welcome enquiries to supervise research students with interests in environmental (in)justice, just transitions, sustainable urbanism, toxic pollution, and urban and environmental sociology/politics.
Current PhD projects supervised:
- “Power, Knowledge, and Ecological Transformations: The Case of the Thal Desert.”
- “Assembling Transnational Environmental Victimization: The Arica v. Boliden Minerals Case.”
- “China’s Low-carbon Energy Transition: A Case Study of the Xing’an League Clean Energy Demonstration Base in Inner Mongolia.”
Completed PhD projects supervised:
- “The Dynamics of Meaning-Making: Negotiating Non-Violence in Hong Kong’s Democracy Movement between 2014 and 2019.”
- “The Brain of the Smart Transportation System: Exploring the Role of Future Expectations and Sociotechnical Imaginaries in Cutting-Edge Science and Technology Policymaking in China.”
- “Placemaking in the Post-Functionalist and Post-Digital City: The Case Study of Ziferblat.”
- “Intervention Work: An Ethnography of NEET to EET Transitions.”
Teaching
Convening:
URBAN 5116 Sustainable Urban Futures (PGT)
Contributing to:
URBAN 5090 International Urban Challenges (PGT)
