Public Engagement Sub-Committee Members

Emily Cox

Emily Cox

Researcher

Emily is a researcher in environmental policy and social psychology, in the Understanding Risk Group at Cardiff University. Her work focuses on the social science of technology and innovation, with particular expertise technologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Her work includes public perceptions, policy, governance and ethics. For the past three years she has researched public perceptions of Enhanced Weathering, a technique to remove CO2 by sprinkling crushed rocks onto soils, working to embed principles of public engagement and responsible innovation in technology development. She also works on energy system resilience and the psychology of disruptive events, and works to incorporate ideas of social resilience into low-carbon infrastructure development. Emily has a background in the NGO sector, and remains a committed environmental campaigner.

Mahmud Farooque

Mahmud Farooque

Associate Director

Mahmud Farooque is the Associate Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) and a Clinical Associate Professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University. Mahmud’s work at the ASU Washington Center focuses on making science more democratic and useful. The useful component engages boundary practitioners at the science and policy interface for reconciling the supply of and demand for scientific information. The democratic component leverages a network of academics, educators and analysts for participatory technology assessment (pTA). Mahmud is the principal coordinator of Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST), which brings together academic research centers, informal science education centers, citizen science programs and non-partisan policy think tanks to engage citizens on decision-making related to science and technology policy. His pTA project portfolio includes deliberations on topics of biodiversity, space, climate and energy, community resilience, gene drives, driverless cars, solar geoengineering, and human gene editing.

Elisabeth Graffy

Elisabeth Graffy

Professor

Elisabeth Graffy is Professor of Practice in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Sustainability Scientist in the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at Arizona State University. Her research, teaching and public engagement focus on sustainability transitions, disruptions and innovations involving food, energy, water, climate change, and strategic organizational leadership. She designed and directs the SEEK (Sustainable Energy, Equity and Knowledge-Sharing) Project which leverages multi-sectoral partnerships to generate social innovation and stewardship-based climate solutions. In addition to overseeing the capital budget for homeless housing in New York City, directing a refugee program in Somalia, and mediating farm credit disputes in the Midwest, Dr. Graffy held leadership roles in the federal government. She was appointed by the Acting Secretary of the Interior to lead the department’s involvement in a White House policy initiative on environmental decision-making with the Council on Environmental Quality and served as National Policy Advisor for the National Water Quality Assessment Program at the US Geological Survey. She advised Congress on agroenvironmental issues at the US Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment and developed strategies to support microenterprises as a MUCIA fellow at the US Agency for International Development. She has received professional service and academic awards for her work at the science-policy interface, including the Dimock award for best article and Brownlow award for best article by a practitioner in Public Administration Review, the only such dual award in journal history. She holds degrees in Politics (Princeton University), Agricultural Economics (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Environment & Resources/Public Policy (University of Wisconsin-Madison).

Elspeth Spence

Elspeth Spence

Research Associate

Elspeth Spence has a background in environmental psychology and is currently a research associate at Cardiff University as part of the Understanding Risk Group. Her research assesses public perceptions of environmental risks, particularly around emerging risks related to climate change. Her PhD work explored how the public understood the unfamiliar risk issue of ocean acidification and she maintains an interest in perceptions of marine climate change impacts. Elspeth currently works as part of the Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation, which is examining the feasibility of enhanced rock weathering, including how the public would respond to this carbon dioxide removal proposal. She has researched perceptions of those living in the US, UK and Australia on enhanced weathering and carbon dioxide removal more generally, and is currently collaborating with colleagues in Malaysian Borneo to explore public attitudes in the Global South.