Karen Bell

Professor Karen Bell is a leading academic in Social and Environmental Justice at the University of Glasgow’s Urban Studies & Social Policy department. Her work bridges environmental sustainability with social equity, focusing on Just Transition frameworks, working-class environmentalism, and marginalized community advocacy. She has held visiting fellowships at UNRISD and Asian energy institutes, and received prestigious awards like the ESRC Future Research Leader fellowship (2016-2019).

Her research spans global comparative studies, including analyses of environmental justice strategies in the US, UK, South Korea, Bolivia, and Cuba. Recent projects investigate defense sector decarbonization and Romani communities’ sustainable practices. Bell’s work emphasizes inclusive decision-making models and critiques elite-driven environmentalism, advocating for intersectional approaches involving class, race, and geography.

Key grants include £922k AHRC funding for Romani environmental knowledge projects and £800k ESRC support for military decarbonization research. She has supervised PhD students Molly Coyle (Just Transition perspectives) and Tianyi Tang (ecological gentrification in Shanghai).

Bell teaches modules on Environment and Climate Justice, and publishes widely in journals like Local Environment, Contemporary Social Science, and Journal of Rural Studies. Her books include Working-Class Environmentalism (2020) and Achieving Environmental Justice (2014).