Meet the people who make up STEM Faculty.
Karen joined the School of Engineering and Innovation and the Built Environment Cluster in 2021, as a Research Fellow on 'Project Groundwater'. Together with lead/P-I Alice Moncaster, Karen is working on Project Groundwater as part of Buckinghamshire Council’s consortium of partners to improve community resilience to groundwater flooding across the chalk streams of the Chilterns. This partnership is one of 25 projects, part of the Government’s Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme to inform future approaches and investment in flood risk management.
With a background in environmental management and planning, Karen initially worked in practice at the Forestry Commission and then as a Local Authority Planner, involved in the development of regeneration partnerships and task groups across departments, government agencies and stakeholders (flood risk, water quality, access, natural environment). It was due to the institutional challenges experienced as a practitioner, endeavoring to implement novel policy in natural flood risk management (making space for water), that she returned to academia and was drawn to interpretative policy analysis to challenge environmental policy transition and implementation. Following her PhD and lectureship in the Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool (2008-2016), Karen then joined the OU in 2016 as a Research Fellow in Collaborative Governance in the Department of Public Leadership and Social Enterprise (PuLSE) within the OU's Business School. There she was involved with one of the University's priority research areas aimed at addressing 21st century global challenges, Citizenship and Governance, rethinking the changing relationships between states, markets and citizens in the 21st century and the challenges of governance and leadership - namely with adaptation to climate change. Karen extended her interdisciplinary research to collaborative governance theory, to gain further insight into the challenges faced by practitioners and policy makers involved in water management, wider environmental partnerships and climate change adaptation. She remains a Visiting Fellow with PuLSE and still collaborates with colleagues, including in the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership.
Education and qualifications:
Karen's research explores policy and practical innovations through theoretically or conceptually informed lenses. Although she still sees herself as a ‘pracademic’, connecting theory to effect practice; to understand the feasibility of policy implementation within the limits of often dominant neo-liberal and techno-centric discourses. She is currently working with the Project Groundwater partnership to increase (a critical) understanding of what is a fluid concept of community resilience, how the technical innovations of the project can be co-produced and their social impacts evaluated with communities. Her initial interest (at Liverpool) was in the integration of spatial planning and flood risk management, particularly natural flood management, understanding the socio-political forces that increase flood risk, how spatial planning policy can contribute to risk governance in hazard-prone areas, how planners can integrate with neighbouring sectors and stakeholders to bring about land use change and resilience to climate change. As her own academic background spans the natural and social sciences, in addition to being applied and practitioner facing, she is drawn to transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, working with engineers, physical geographers, ecologists, environmental scientists and other disciplines within and external to the OU.
Previous research projects and activity include:
PhD Supervision (at the OU):
Claude Nsobya - Understanding the importance of context in the relationship between resilience and community involvement in flood risk governance (2022 - ongoing)
Dr Lindsey Elliott - Enabling collaboration in the conservation sector (2017-2022, with Siv Vangen as Primary Supervisor in PuLSE, the Business School)
Editorial Reviewer:
Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis; Journal of Flood Risk Management; International Journal of Water Governance; Town Planning Review; Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy & Management
Karen was an Associate Lecturer at the OU on two undergraduate modules, level one U116 Environment: journeys through a changing world and level two DST 206 Environment: sharing a dynamic planet in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS). She is also interested in scholarship, in particular understanding and improving communications and collaboration between the student support team and ALs to enhance the quality of student support, having undertaken two short projects (working with the E&I Student Support Team, (in the STEMA SRSC) (with Sinead O'Connor-Gotra, and Project Leads: Daphne Chang and Stephen Jones, sponsored by the Associate Dean - Student Experience, 2019-22). Karen has also worked with colleagues in the Open University Wales/Y Brifysgol Agored (Helen Thomas, Partnerships Co-ordinator) on Pathways to the Environment, to discuss the role and challenges faced by the third sector on environmental issues – how a changing environment might influence what we do; and how can we live and work more sustainably and to introduce third sector and other interested parties to OpenLearn and the formal environment qualification pathways at the OU.
As a previous Lecturer (School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, 2011-2016) Karen contributed to the continued development of a varied portfolio of UG, PGT and PGR modules and programmes in Planning, Geography and Environmental Management. She was the module co-ordinator for Masters Dissertations (50-100 students), 2nd yr UG Environmental Sustainability (100-180 students), contribution to Spatial Planning in Action, Cities and Regions,Human Impacts on the Environment, Green Infrastructure, Making Plans and Planning Practice Placement. She was Director of Postgraduate Research for Planning, with overarching responsibility for 34 PhD students, moderator for Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) China modules and former discipline Assessment Officer, delivering on and advising on the University's design, implementation and review of assessment, e.g. academic integrity policy, progression requirements, Module Review Boards and the External Examination process.
Karen's previous pedagogical research explored interdisciplinary perspectives in ‘Education for Sustainable Development’ and the lecturer’s challenge of implementing the University strategy of internationalisation of the curriculum at the ‘chalk face’. She was Co-I in the University of Liverpool Faculty Teaching Pilot (Environmental Sustainability), 'After the earthquake adapting to large changes in student cohorts' (2015).
Qualifications and Awards:
Karen is a member of the Welsh Government's Flood and Coastal Erosion Committee, with the committee's role of advising Welsh Ministers on all flood and coastal erosion risk management matters in Wales, including raising awareness, preparation and community resilience to flooding. She is a current member of the Resources Sub Committee, tasked with reviewing resources to deliver effective FCERM services. Karen's specific remit is to consider the support to communities and the role of the voluntary sector.
She is also a member of the Defra/EA/WG/NRW Thematic Advisory Group (TAG) for Flood Risk Management Policy, Strategy and Investment (2014-present). Theme Advisory Groups (TAGs) support Defra/EA/WG/NRW Joint Programme of flood and coastal erosion risk management research and development in a horizon scanning capacity and in the development of research proposals. She was previously Chair and Deputy Chair of the RTPI Cymru/Wales Policy and Research Forum (2010 – 2017).
Karen has previously worked with a number of organisations across the North West, including the Ribble Rivers Trust and Ribble Life as part of DEFRA's more holistic catchment-based approach to better engage with people and organisations in river basin management.
