Congratulations to my PhD student Susie Wang (cosupervised by Carmen Lawrence, Zoe Leviston, and Iain Walker) whose Doctor of Philosophy thesis entitled “Climate change from a distance: Psychological distance and personal engagement with climate change” was accepted by the Board of the Graduate Research School as satisfying the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. An abridged version of the abstract to Susie’s thesis is below:
Inaction on climate change is often linked to the idea that climate change is perceived as a distant problem. In this thesis I have developed a model describing why some people feel distant from climate change, why some people feel close, and how perceptions of distance might be shifted. I have presented an analysis of how psychological distance from climate change might be overcome, through building connections between climate change and objects of care, with the use of increasingly informal, intimate methods of communication, and an expansion of social involvement from the general public.
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