Professor Elizabeth Shove FBA

Summary

Elizabeth Shove is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University.  Much of her research has to do with issues of consumption, material culture and everyday life. Her 2003 book, Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: the social organization of normality (2003) established questions of ordinary consumption and demand as legitimate and exciting topics of sociological enquiry.  More recent writing has played a major role in developing social theories of practice: including The Dynamics of Social Practice (2012, with Matt Watson and Mika Pantzar), and The Nexus of Practices (2017, edited with Ted Schatzki and Allison Hui).  From 2013 - 2018, Elizabeth was PI of the DEMAND centre (Dynamics of energy, mobility and demand), developing a distinctive approach to the relation between Infrastructures in Practice (2019, edited with Frank Trentmann), and to the ways in which energy is conceptualized – see Energy Fables (2019 edited with Jenny Rinkinen and Jacopo Torriti). Elizabeth is currently interested in the contributions that social theories of practice can make to a range of other global problems, including obesity and public health.