Dr Kevin Grecksch

About

Dr Kevin Grecksch is a departmental lecturer and course director for MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford.

Dr Grecksch is a social scientist who specialises in normative and analytical aspects of governance, especially with regard to water and climate change adaptation. His research interests include (multilevel) environmental governance, water governance, climate change adaptation, governance of societal transformation processes, property rights and the governance of natural resources, sustainability and ecological economics. Dr Grecksch has a particular interest in why and how power relationships, institutions and knowledge shape the governance of water and climate change. He is also passionate about public engagement with research and has contributed insightful blog articles for the University of Oxford's Science blog (please see below). His research on drought and water scarcity is now a lesson plan for Year 10 GCSE Geography students. Dr Grecksch has also contributed ideas to a primary school story book about a drought super hero.

Prior to joining the School of Geography and Environment, Dr Grecksch was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (2018-2021) and postdoctoral fellow (2015-2018) at the University of Oxford's Centre for Socio-Legal Studies where he remains an associate. Before coming to Oxford, he was postdoctoral researcher and projects coordinator at the University of Oldenburg's Centre for Environmental and Sustainability Research (COAST) where he coordinated projects on sustainable bioenergy supply chains and marine energy potentials. In summer 2013, Dr Grecksch was visiting researcher at Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Before joining COAST, he was doctoral researcher and lecturer in Ecological Economics at the University of Oldenburg's Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, researching the governance of climate change adaptation.

Dr Grecksch is the co-editor of the Palgrave Macmillan book series 'Global Challenges in Water Governance'. He is also a Research Fellow in the Earth System Governance Project, the world's largest network of social scientists interested in global environmental change and its governance challenges.

Dr Grecksch's ongoing research on water and climate change governance addresses questions of power relationships, the role of institutions and knowledge. Past research was part of the multidisciplinary ENDOWS (ENgaging diverse stakeholders and publics with outputs from the UK DrOught and Water Scarcity programme) and MaRIUS (Governance of Water Scarcity and Drought in the UK) project that engaged legal scholars, economists, human geographers, hydrologists, and climate scientists in the development of a more risk-based approach to governance of drought. Dr Grecksch was also the PI of a John Fell Fund supported project on 'Managing drought and water scarcity - Strategies and options for the UK's large industrial water consumers'. His research into drought and water scarcity in the UK resulted in a monograph 'Drought and water scarcity in the UK: Social science perspectives on governance, knowledge and outreach' published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2021.

(Profile image credit: Jonathan Kirkpatrick.)