About
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Research
Research interests
- Food Geographies
- Political Ecology
- Science and Technology Studies
- More-than-Human Geography
- Nature Recovery
Current research
Theo's research fits under three broad themes:
1. Food System Resilience
At Southampton, Theo is currently a post-doctoral research fellow working alongside Professor Emma Roe on the TRISoMe Chicken project (Towards Resilient Industrial Social Metabolic Relations). The project goal is to develop principles for improving UK food system resilience, through co-produced knowledge, intervention and engagement, by researchers, industry stakeholders and consumers.
For the project, Theo is researching the benefits and harms of an industrialised food system to communities of humans, animals, microbes, and the environment. Theo is currently investigating the impact of chicken feed, flesh, and farms on different human and more-than-human communities. This involves interviews with a range of stakeholders, including soy feed producers, traders, and purchasers, poultry scientists, and environmental NGOs.
2. The Politics of UK Nature Recovery
Theo's PhD research investigated the politics of nature restoration, rewilding and reforestation in the Scottish Highlands. Drawing upon a mixture of ethnographic and interview techniques, his research examined how different ecologies are measured using a range of metrics and technologies, and how the forms of environmental data generated are used to justify or reject different ways of restoring nature. This research uncovered how certain ecologies are made financially and socially valuable - for the benefit of some at the expense of others.
Throughout his work on nature recovery, Theo centres a commitment to multispecies justice, in which governance is directed towards supporting more-than-human communities of humans, animals, and other non-human species. He has published about this work for Environmental Science and Policy and has a paper forthcoming with Environmental Humanities celebrating the term ‘regeneration’.
As part of this work, he has published about the knowledge politics of emerging technologies used for carbon measurement and verification, such as drones, laser scanners and remote sensors, also in Environmental Science and Policy. He is currently producing a film about this work with artist-filmmaker Dr. Stephen Cornford, which investigates the visual politics of carbon removal. Filming is set to take place in March and April 2025.
3. Carbon Finance
Alongside Dr. George Cusworth, Theo has been developing a new conceptual vocabulary, under the heading of ‘environmental performativity’. Theo and George are investigating the different types of ‘performances’ used to legitimise different environmental governance schemes, and the different ‘performative’ outcomes ushered in by different environmental measurement schemes. This work highlights the political power that forms of science, measurement, and representation hold in securing trust for different approaches to governing nature. The first paper from this research collaboration is currently forthcoming in Progress in Environmental Geography.
Building from his PhD research into the UK carbon market, Theo has been working alongside Dr. Sohus zu Ermgassen and a team of ecologists and economists based at the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery to develop an alternative approach to nature finance. This research reviews the problems with nature markets (biodiversity and carbon offsetting markets), researches alternative mechanisms for scaling up finance available for conservation and nature recovery, and outlines which types of nature recovery projects deliver intersectional social and ecological benefits. The first publication, which sets a vision for ‘Reimagining Nature Finance’, is currently under review.
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Research groups
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Research interests
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Current research
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Research projects
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Publications
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Supervision
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Teaching
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Courses and modules
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External roles and responsibilities
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Biography
Theo Stanley is an environmental geographer whose research examines the relationship between science, technology and justice. His work draws on Science and Technology (STS) and political ecology to investigate how, why, and with what effects knowledge about nature produced. He uses qualitative methods to analyse a range of case studies across environmental governance. His current research interests include food system resilience, the politics of nature recovery, and carbon finance.
Prior to joining Southampton, Theo completed his ESRC-funded PhD in Environmental Geography at the University of Oxford (2020-2024), where he also worked as a post-doctoral researcher as part of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery. He was a Visiting Research Fellow at Humboldt University, Berlin (2023) and taught on the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance and the MA in Medical Anthropology (2021-2022). Prior to his PhD, he worked for the anti-deforestation think-tank Global Canopy (2019-2020). He holds an MSc in Environmental Governance (Graded Distinction) and a BA (hons, First Class) in Philosophy from the University of Bristol.
He welcomes potential collaborators such as journalists, artist and academics to email him at t.stanley@soton.ac.uk
Awards:
- ZK/U (Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik). Artist Residency. (March-April 2025)
- Humboldt University. Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations Laboratory. Overseas Institutional Visit. (Full funding from Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership) (2023)
- Hertford College, Oxford. Mortimer-May Scholarship (2020-2023)
- University of Oxford. Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership. Economic and Social Research Council Studentship. (2020-2023)
- University of Cambridge. Economic and Social Research Council Studentship. (2020-2023) (Declined)
- University of Oxford. Nature, Society and Environmental Governance MSc. Best Overall Performance Prize (2019)
- University of Oxford. Nature, Society and Environmental Governance MSc. Best Dissertation Prize (2019)
- University of Bristol, Southwest Doctoral Training Program. Economic and Social Research Council Studentship (2019-2022) (Declined).
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Prizes
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