Dr Jon Phillips

Jon Phillips is a Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Development in the Centre of Development, Environment and Policy (CeDEP), Department of Development Studies.

Jon’s research analyses how nature matters in the exercise and contestation of social power, and how inequalities are produced through the management of environmental change. He is particularly interested in how the inequalities of fossil fuel economies are reproduced or reduced in low carbon economies. He uses concepts from political economy and geography to analyse the uneven spatial development of energy and resources, and their political alternatives. 

Past and current research has analysed the politics of oil production in Ghana, electricity generation in Kenya, carbon markets in India, urban infrastructure in South Africa, and charcoal in Uganda. This research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), British Academy, Newton Fund, and Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN). 

He has previously been a Lecturer in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Research Associate at the University of Exeter, King’s College London and University of East Anglia.

His published work appears in journals such as Global Environmental Change, African Affairs, Geoforum, Review of African Political Economy, and Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space.

• Climate change mitigation
• Energy geographies
• Resource development
• Infrastructure
• Environmental justice
• Sub-Saharan Africa

Jon welcomes PhD proposals engaged with a range of political perspectives within geography and development studies, and that explore aspects of social and environmental change associated with energy, resource development, extractive industries, infrastructure, conservation or climate change mitigation.

• Google Scholar