TSU Seminar Series 2023

The 2023 TSU Seminar Series ran from March to May 2023. The recorded talks are available to watch below.

For more information about the seminar series, please contact Kirsty Ray

1-2pm, 8 March 2023

• Prof Paola Jiron (University of Chile)

Many cities in the global south are recipients of varying trends in urban / transport interventions. Many ideas circulate through conferences, summits and congresses, papers, policy briefs or directly through international organizations or international consultants. sustainable, electric, active, and caring mobilities are all relevant mobilities initiatives that could potentially greatly benefit all sorts of cities, and much can be learned from many examples worldwide. However, as each trend becomes installed as the best new solution, questions arise as to the pertinence and applicability of such interventions. Using research from research in the city of Santiago, Chile, the presentation suggests taking a closer look at such trends and situating them considering mobilities needs, particularly by looking at the political, material, embodied and uneven contexts where such mobilities take place. Moving away from a modal analysis towards a trajectory analysis that understand everyday mobilities is suggested as a useful way to situate such practices.

1-2pm, 26 April 2023

• Dr Lucy Baker (Aberystwyth University)

1-2pm 3 May 2023

• Professor Milena Büchs (University of Leeds)

Large demand reductions need to be realised in the transport sector for the UK to meet its climate targets. Scholars and policy makers increasingly acknowledge that demand reduction needs to be designed in a socially fair way that focuses responsibility on those who have contributed more to climate change and have more capacity to bear cost, while ensuring that the needs of poorer people in society are met. In this presentation I ask what some of the implications of a just transitions perspective could be for tackling air travel emissions. Based on survey data analysis, I will examine the inequality of air travel and present results from modelling distributional impacts of taxes on air travel in the UK. Findings show that richer, more educated, younger people, and those in urban areas are significantly more likely to fly, fly more often, and hence to have higher flight emissions than their counterparts. As a result, carbon taxes on air travel have progressive distributional impacts which means that they burden richer people more than poorer people relative to income. However, some people, especially recent migrants, are likely to be more affected by flight taxes too. I will end by discussing policy implications and justice implications of these findings.

1-2pm 11 May 2023

• Dr Jacob Doherty (University of Edinburgh)