Academics

Welcome

An anthropologist by training, I lived and worked for more than two decades in the United States before coming  to Oxford in 2002. I am now based at the Säid Business School where I direct an interdisciplinary research Institute, the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (InSIS) which is also part of the James Martin 21st Century School. I have also directed the  ESRC's national research programme on Science in Society, and have been a member of the Royal Commission of Environmental Pollution, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Royal Society's Working Group on Geonegineering the Climate. I supervise doctoral research students and teach on the MBA and MSc programmes. I am also Honoray Professor of Climate Change and Society at the University of Copenhagen.

Research Interests

Before I came to Oxford I spent two decades in the United States developing and leading interdisciplinary research programmes on science technology and environment, specifically on global climate change.

My current research focuses on three related areas. These are the future of cities,  scientific and other technical advisory processes in the governance of technological change, and the dynamics of climate change science and policy.

Biography

Steve Rayner is Director of the Insitute for Science, Innovation and Society (InSIS) at the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford, from where he also directs the Oxford Programme on the Future of Cities. He is also a Professorial Fellow of Keble College, Oxford and Honorary Professor of Climate Change and Society at the University of Copenhagen. Before coming to the University of Oxford in 2002, Steve Rayner was Director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He held simultaneous appointments as Professor of Environment and Public Affairs, Professor of Sociology, and as the Chief Social Scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction. Prior to that, he held the rank of Chief Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Located in the Washington DC office, he led the Global Change Research Group from 1991 to 1996. Previously, he was Deputy Director of the Global Environmental Studies Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he was responsible for research in Policy, Energy, and Human Systems. Rayner has been a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and  a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He is editor (with Elizabeth Malone) of Human Choice and Climate Change: An International Assessment. These 4 volumes (published in February 1998) bring together almost one hundred authors and contributors from all parts of the world. He was a member of the DOE Multi-Laboratory Climate Change Committee that produced the book Energy and Climate Change. He has testified before US Congressional Committees on US policy regarding global change research and UK Parliamentary Committees on climate policy. He was also lead author and contributor to various Reports to the US Congress on climate change policy and implementation. Altogether, he is co-author or editor of 8 books, 3 special issues of journals, more than 50 articles and papers, and 20 technical reports covering a broad field including social and market impacts of technologies, technology acceptance, risk management, global and local environmental impacts and policy, economic recovery and development, land use, energy policy, industrial ecology, and public engagement with science. He is the coauthor of a number of controversial articles on climate change policy including Zen and the Art of Carbon Cycle Maintenance, Lifting the Taboo on Adaptation and Time to Ditch Kyoto, all published in the journal Nature. He has made numerous presentations on the issues of risk management, global change, and sustainable development to industry, academia, and government. He has taught at Virginia Tech, Cornell University, the University of Tennessee, the US Office of Personnel Management's Executive Seminar Center, and the University of London. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University and Boston University School of Public Health. He has received several awards, including the 25th Annual Homer N. Calver Award from the Environment Section of the American Public Health Association, the PNNL Laboratory Director’s Award for R&D Excellence, and two Martin-Marietta Energy Systems Awards for ground breaking work in risk analysis and global climate change policy analysis respectively. He is a Member of the Cosmos Club in Washington DC and has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Royal Society of Arts, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Recent Publications

• P Healey & S Rayner, Unnatural Selection: The Challenges of Engineering Tomorrow's People (Earthscan, 2009)
• 'Human Capital, Social Capital and Institutional Capacity' in Linkages of Sustainability, ed. T. Graedel & E. van der Voet (MIT Press, 2009)
• 'Energy: Stocks, Flows, and Prospects' in Linkages of Sustainability, ed. T. Graedel & E. van der Voet (MIT Press, 2009)
• 'Weather, Climate and Everyday Life: Social Science Perspectives' in Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Lif, ed. V. Jankovic & C. Barboza (MAST, 2009)
• 'Empowered or reduced? Reflections on the citizen and the push for participation' in The future of public dialogue with science, ed. J. Stilgoe (Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, 2009)
• 'Cultural Theory and Risk' in The Handbook of Risk, ed. R. Heath & D. O’Hair (Routledge, 2008)
• S Rayner, 'The Rise of Risk and the Decline of Politics' in Environmental Hazards, 7(2) (2007), 165-172
• 'You Never Miss the Water till the Well Runs Dry: Crisis and Creativity in California' in Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World, ed. M. Verweij and M. Thompson (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
• 'The Case for Clumsiness' in Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World, ed. M. Verweij and M. Thompson (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
• M. Verweij, M. Douglas, R. Ellis, C. Engel, F. Hendriks, S. Lohmann, S. Ney, S. Rayner, M. Thompson, 'Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World' in Public Administration, 84 (2006), 817-843
• D. Lach, S. Rayner and H. Ingram, 'Taming the Waters: Strategies to Domesticate the Wicked Problems of Water Resource Management' in International Journal of Water, 3(1) (2005), 1-17
• S. Rayner, H. Ingram and D. Lach, 'Weather Forecasts are for Wimps: Why Water Resource Managers do not use Climate Forecasts' in Climatic Change, 69(2-3) (2005), 197-227
• D. Lach, S. Rayner and H. Ingram, 'Maintaining the Status Quo: How Institutional Norms and Practices Create Conservative Water Organizations.' in University of Texas Law Review, 83 (2005), 2027-2053
• 'The Novelty Trap : Why does institutional learning about new technologies seem so difficult?' in Industry and Higher Education, vol. 18, no. 5 (2004), 349 - 55
• 'Coping with climate variability : municipal water agencies in Southern California' in Climate and water : transboundary challenges in the Americas, ed. HF Diaz & BJ Morehouse (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2003)
• 'Democracy in the age of assessment : reflections on the roles of expertise and democracy in public-sector decision making' in Science and Public Policy, vol. 30, no. 3 (2003), 163 - 70
• 'Domesticating Nature : Commentary on the anthropological study of weather and climate discourse' in Weather, climate, culture, ed. S Strauss & BS Orlove (Berg, Oxford, 2003)
• 'GM diplomacy : Why we can't agree' in Newsweek, vol. CXLII, no.11 (2003), 55
• 'Who's in charge? Worldwide displacement of democratic judgment by expert assessments' in Economic and Political Weekly, vol. XXXVIII, no. 48 (2003), 5113-9
• 'Climate change, poverty, and intragenerational equity : the national level' in International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, vol. 1, no. 2 (2001), 175 - 202
• 'Social and economic approaches to global environmental change' in Encyclopedia of global environmental change: Volume 5 Social and economic dimensions of global environmental change, ed. RE Munn & P Timmerman (Wiley, Chichester, 2001)
• 'The role of research standpoint in integrating global- and local-scale research' in Climate Research, vol. 19 no.2 (2001), 173 - 8