Dr Rebecca Pearse
Research interests
- Climate change and energy
- Inequality
- Social change and movements
- Feminist theory
- Sociology of knowledge
Biography
Beck Pearse is a sociologist who joined ANU’s School of Sociology and the Fenner School of Environment & Society in 2020. Her teaching and research focuses on inequalities and environmental policy. Beck is interested in how people from different walks of life experience environmental change and how environmental policy can contribute to building a fair and ecologically abundant world.
Beck’s current projects investigate the possibilities for just sustainable transitions, with particular focus on rural land and labour relations. She is a Chief Investigator on two ARC Discovery Projects: Decarbonising Electricity (Goodman et al. 2018-21) and Environmental Justice and the Making of Just Food and Energy Policy (Schlosberg, Pearse, Rickards 2020-22).
Beck previously held a teaching fellowship in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, where she was also a Key Researcher at the Sydney Environment Institute (2017-20). In 2019, Beck led the development of the City of Sydney's Equality Indicators framework with James Hitchcock and the Sydney Policy Lab. In 2016-17, Beck was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Sociology at Australian National University, working on the ARC project Gendered Excellence in the Social Sciences. Before that she worked as a Research Associate contributing to the The Coal Rush and Beyond and Global Arenas of Knowledge ARC Discovery Projects.
Beck's work is published in environmental policy and sociological journals. Her doctoral thesis was published as a monograph Pricing Carbon in Australia (Routledge/Earthscan, 2018) and documents the regulatory contradictions of Australia's short-lived emissions trading scheme. Beck also contributed to Beyond the Coal Rush (Goodman et al 2020, CUP), to a revision of Raewyn Connell's Gender: In World Perspective (3rd edition, 2015, Polity), and to an ethnography of climate movement politics with Stuart Rosewarne and James Goodman (Routledge, 2014).
Publications
- 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, '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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Environmental Justice and the Making of Just Food and Energy Policy (Secondary Investigator)
