Welcoming Sarah Boddington
We’re delighted to welcome Sarah Boddington, who joins us over the coming months supporting the HDR portfolio while Elena Escalante Block is on maternity leave. Sarah will be working closely with HDR students, bringing both academic insight and a strong interest in how research connects to real-world impact.
An ANU alumna and Planetary Health Equity Hothouse Future Fellow 2023, her research focuses on what enables the adoption of lower carbon practices and broad-based support for climate action policy. Her PhD explored how different groups in Australia navigate climate mitigation, including climate advocates working within communities not traditionally associated with climate activism, such as farmers, investors and sports figures.
“There is often a view in these groups that climate policy will hurt them or is something only ‘greenies’ should care about,” she explains. “But the climate advocates think differently, and I was interested in the strategies they use to shift those perspectives within their own groups. I see this work as responding to the legacy of Australia’s social and political conflict around climate policy, and in some cases, experimenting with ways to build broader, bipartisan support for more ambitious climate action.”
Sarah also studied on how different groups respond to the phasing out of gas stovetops and how different masculine norms and identities shape views of electric vehicles. She also created tools for the interdisciplinary study of lower carbon practices.
In her new role, Sarah is particularly looking forward to engaging with students across different stages of their research journey.
“I hope that I can be approachable and helpful to HDR students and that having recently finished my PhD is a positive. One of the ways that I will do this is to continue the work that Elena started by running monthly skills enhancement seminars. These will tap into the expertise within Regnet on key topics, such as post-PhD careers and qualitative analysis. I will also contribute to one of the weekly seminars, by presenting on interdisciplinarity,” she says.
She is keen to have conversations with RegNet staff and academics, finding new connections to her topics and hearing perspectives that are completely new to her. She appreciates that the School has a great system for making sure people meet and get to know each other. Sarah is also looking forward to having the time to plan out, and begin, her new project.
“I feel like my professional life exposed me to systems change and the politics of change, and my PhD was a chance to do a deep dive into how social norms and identities change. In my postdoctoral work, I’d love to find a way to bring these two worlds together, while continuing to focus on climate mitigation in Australia,” she says.
Outside of work, Sarah helps run a meditation group, which is a wonderful chance for her to find a calm centre and to get to know others deeply. She enjoys hiking in the bush, often with her two dogs. Together with her partner and 21-year old daughter, who is finishing her Psychology Honours degree at ANU, she enjoys finding new places to eat, with current favourites being Under Bakery and Sandoochie. Sarah also enjoys cooking new things, reading novels and biographies, and goes to a long-standing book group.