Dr Rebecca Pearse
Biography
Beck Pearse is a sociologist with a background researching the political economy of climate and energy policy, inequalities and rural issues. Beck’s current research projects investigate labour and land relations in the industrial transition to a 'net zero' economy. She's interested in how people work and negotiate change.
Before joining the ANU, Beck was a teaching fellow in the Political Economy Department at the University of Sydney (2017-2020). And before that she worked on a string of casual teaching jobs and ARC Discovery Projects as a research assistant / associate (2010-2016) while writing a PhD. Working in those classrooms and research teams gave Beck essential training on the job, particularly in reading with curiosity across different disciplines, ethnographic fieldwork and interviewing.
Beck's doctoral thesis was published as a monograph Pricing Carbon in Australia (Routledge/Earthscan, 2018) and documents the regulatory contradictions of Australia's emissions trading scheme. Beck has co-authored reports for UN Women (with Raewyn Connell, 2014) and the City of Sydney (with James Hitchcock, 2019) on gender and urban inequalities respectively. She also contributed to a comparative study of coal in Australia, India and Germany led by James Goodman - The Coal Rush and Beyond (CUP, 2020) and to an ethnography of climate movement politics (Routledge, 2014) with James Goodman and Stuart Rosewarne. More recently, Beck contributed to Renewables and Rural Australia (2022) - the first social study of rural people's perspectives on the NSW Renewable Energy Zones.
Researcher's projects
Lives and labour of Australia's energy workforce (2022-2024)
History of land in Australia and NZ climate policy, 1990-2010 (2023-2024)
Environmental justice in 'net zero' policy making (2020-2023)
Current student projects
Honours supervisor
- Callum Dargavel, Re-regulation of Australia's energy sector in transition, PPE Honours, ANU.
PhD panel chair
- Joshua Walker, Indonesia's electric vehicle supply chain, School of Sociology, ANU.
- Andreas Alexandra, Movement strategies and future imaginaries, Fenner School, ANU.
PhD supervision panel member
- Rachel England, Gender and the Sustainable Development Goals, Fenner School, ANU.
- Inga Koralewska, Abortion resistance in Poland, School of Sociology, ANU.
- Alexander Cox, Value and science in environmental markets, Crawford School, ANU.
Masters supervision panel member
- Daniel Mugadiwa, Energy transition in Southern Africa, Fenner School, ANU.
Past student projects
Honours and Masters thesis students
- Sean Marshall (2022) How environmentalists communicate 'just transition' in Gladstone, Crawford School, ANU. Masters research project.
- Ming Choy (2021) The ACT government's street tree program, Fenner School, ANU. Hons 1. Co-supervisor with Professor Peter Kanowski.
- Yan Xia (2020) China's carbon trading experiment, Fenner School, ANU. Masters dissertation.
- Eliza Bicego (2019) Temporary migrant labour in Australia's abbatoirs, Political Economy Department, Sydney University. Hons 1.
Coursework research project students
- Lachlan Rankin (2023) AGL's corporate strategy amidst energy transition, School of Sociology, ANU.
- Adam Gottschalk (2023) Aesthetic politics of windfarm development in the Southern Tablelands, School of Sociology, ANU.
- Yeong Yu (2022) Interest groups and Victoria's fracking ban, School of Sociology, ANU.
- Yolana Truscott (2022) The Australian state and live export controversy, School of Sociology, ANU.
- Olivia Stansfield (2022) Institutional capacities and flood mitigation in six councils, Fenner School, ANU.
- Alexander Cox (2021) Social theories of ignorance in environmental management, Crawford School, ANU.
- Luka Mijnarends (2021) Inequalities and rural landcare, School of Sociology, ANU.
- James Hickson-Doyle (2021) Food sovereignty in Australia's settler economy, Fenner School, ANU.
- Joshua Walker (2020) Imaginaries of Green New Deals during the GFC, School of Sociology, ANU.
- Bryon Dexter (2020) The political resilience of carbon farming in Australia's climate policy regime, School of Sociology, ANU.
- Viswanda Modali (2020) Large-scale solar development in India, Fenner School, ANU.
- Caitlin Pienaar (2019) Academic research labour and Google Scholar, Political Economy Department, USyd.
- Wynston Lee (2019) China and Australia's waste crisis, Political Economy Department, USyd.
- German Ricci (2019) The IMF in Argentina, Political Economy Department, USyd.
Publications
- Cass, D, Connor , L, Heikkinen, R et al. 2022, Renewables & Rural Australia: A Study of Community Experiences in Renewable Energy Zones in NSW and the Case for More Equity and Coordination of the Clean Energy Transformation.
- Pearse, R & Bryant, G 2021, 'Labour in transition: A value-theoretical approach to renewable energy labour', Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 1872-1894.
- Pearse, R 2020, 'Theorising the political economy of energy transformations: Agency, structure, space, process', New Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2020.1810217
- Goodman, J, Connor , L, Ghosh, D et al. 2020, Beyond the Coal Rush: A Turning Point for Global Energy and Climate Policy?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- Pearse, R & Hitchcock, J 2019, The Sydney Equality Indicators Framework: Measures for a Just City.
- Pearse, R, Hitchcock, J & Keane, H 2019, 'Gender, inter/disciplinarity and marginality in the social sciences and humanities: A comparison of six disciplines', Women's Studies International Forum, vol. 72, pp. 109-126.
- Connell, R, Pearse, R, Collyer, F et al. 2018, 'Negotiating with the North: How Southern-tier intellectual workers deal with the global economy of knowledge', The Sociological Review, vol. 66, no. 1, pp. 41-57.
- Connell, R, Pearse, R, Collyer, F et al. 2018, 'Re-making the global economy of knowledge: do new fields of research change the structure of North-South relations?', British Journal of Sociology, vol. 69, no. 3, pp. 738-757.
- Pearse, R 2018, 'Book Review: Enterprising Nature: Economics, Markets, and Finance in Global Biodiversity Politics by Jessica Dempsey', Global Environmental Politics, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 134-136.
- Pearse, R 2018, Pricing Carbon in Australia: Contestation, the State and Market Failure, Earthscan/Routledge, Abingdon.
- Pearse, R 2018, ''Continuity and change': Environmental policy in the 2016 Australian Federal election and the coming energy transition', in Anika Gauja, Peter Chen, Jennifer Curtin and Juliet Pietsch (ed.), Double Disillusion: The 2016 Australian Federal Election, ANU Press, Canberra, Australia, pp. 571-591.
- Pearse, R 2017, 'Feminism', in Fathali M Moghaddam (ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior, SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, pp. 297-301.
- Pearse, R 2017, 'Gender bias', in Fathali M Moghaddam (ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior, SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, pp. 319-322.
- Pearse, R 2017, 'Gender and climate change', Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: WIREs Climate Change, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 16pp.
- Pearse, R 2010, 'Making a market? Contestation and climate change', Journal of Australian Political Economy, vol. 66, no. 66, pp. 166-198.
- Pearse, R 2016, 'Moving targets: Carbon pricing, energy markets, and social movements in Australia', Environmental Politics, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 1079-1101.
- Pearse, R & Connell, R 2016, 'Gender norms and the economy: Insights from social research', Feminist Economics, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 30-53.
- Pearse, R 2016, 'The coal question that emissions trading has not answered', Energy Policy, vol. 99, pp. 319-328.
- Connell, R & Pearse, R 2015, Gender: In World Perspective, Polity Press, 3rd edition, Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA, USA.
- Pearse, R 2014, 'Carbon trading for climate justice?', Asia Pacific Journal of Environmental Law, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 111-130.
- Pearse, R & Bohm, S 2014, 'Ten reasons why carbon markets will not bring about radical emissions reduction', Carbon Management, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 325-337.
- Pearse, R 2014, 'Book review essay: Climate capitalism and its discontents', Global Environmental Politics, vol. 14, pp. 130-135.
- Rosewarne, S, Goodman, J & Pearse, R 2014, Climate Action Upsurge: The ethnography of climate movement politics, Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, UK and New York.
- Connell, R & Pearse, R 2014, Gender Norms and Stereotypes: A Survey of Concepts, Research and Issues About Change, UN Women Expert Group Meeting ‘Envisioning women’s rights in the post - 2015 context’, New York.
- Pearse, R 2013, 'Back to the land? Legitimation, carbon offsets and Australia's emissions trading scheme', Global Change, Peace & Security, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 43-60.
- Pearse, R 2012, 'Mapping REDD in the Asia-Pacific: Governance, marketisation and contention', Ephemera: theory and politics in organization, vol. 12, pp. 181-205.
- Pearse, R & Dehm, J 2011, In the REDD: Australia's Carbon Offset Project in Central Kalimantan, Amsterdam: Friends of the Earth International.
- Pearse, R, Goodman, J & Rosewarne, S 2010, 'Researching direct action against carbon emissions: A digital ethnography of climate agency', Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 76-103.
Projects and Grants
Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.
- Comparing environmental markets in Australia (Primary Investigator)
- Land in Australian and New Zealand climate policy, 1990-2010 (Primary Investigator)
- Partnering with local communities in regional Australia to increase resilience to flood events (Secondary Investigator)
- Environmental Justice and the Making of Just Food and Energy Policy (Secondary Investigator)
