My name is Peter Newell and I am a Professor of International Relations at Sussex University in the UK where I have been based since 2011. I have worked at a number of different institutions and consider myself an interdisciplinary researcher having worked in departments and at institutes of Development Studies (IDS & UEA), environmental studies at the Oxford University Environmental Change Institute and politics and international relations (at Warwick, Sussex and FLACSO Argentina). 

I also try (sometimes successfully) to combine my academic research and teaching with activism on climate change and energy transitions in particular. That’s because, in essence, all my work is interested in understanding, engaging with and achieving change towards a more socially just and ecologically sustainable world and the variety of forms this may take. That remains the driving preoccupation, whether looking at social movements contesting trade policy in Latin America, struggles for corporate accountability in India, how to scale behaviour change or how to accelerate energy transitions away from fossil fuels. Understanding change means getting involved in it. I have been lucky enough to work with and for a large range of civil society organisations, governments, international institutions and businesses over three decades, relationships which continue to inform how I understand and engage with processes of change.

For more than 30 years I have conducted research, consultancy and advisory work on issues of environment and development. This has included work on climate change, energy transitions, agricultural biotechnology, corporate accountability and trade policy working in a number of countries including Argentina, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Mexico and South Africa. In recent years, my research has mainly focussed on the political economy of low carbon energy transitions.

Besides working for academic institutions including the universities of Sussex, Oxford, Warwick and East Anglia, and FLACSO Argentina, I have undertaken commissioned research and policy work for the governments of the UK, Sweden and Finland and for international organisations such as UNDP, GEF, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and UNCTAD. I have worked for NGOs such as Friends of the Earth and Climate Network Europe and together with groups such as Carbon Market Watch, Stand Earth, Practical Action, Transparency International, Care, Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, and the International Council on Human Rights Policy. I sit on the board of directors of Greenpeace UK and am a member of the advisory board of the Greenhouse think-tank and serve on the steering committee of the global campaign for a Fossil-Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. I served as editor of the European Journal of International Relations, am associate editor of Global Environmental Politics and sit on the board of the journals Journal of Peasant Studies and the Earth Systems Governance Journal.