معرفی
Lara Houston is a Research Fellow at the Global Sustainability Institute within Anglia Ruskin University's Faculty of Science and Engineering. Her research examines sustainability through grassroots practices and citizen-led innovation, focusing on how marginalized communities create alternative knowledge systems. She employs creative, participatory methods in transdisciplinary collaborations with electronics repairers, urban farmers, and citizen scientists.
Education:
- PhD Sociology, Lancaster University
- MA Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London
- BA Design, Goldsmiths, University of London
Houston's research centers on repair cultures as sites of socio-technical innovation and environmental justice. She investigates how communities sustain technologies through repair practices and develop alternative infrastructures. Her work intersects sustainability studies, digital anthropology, and participatory design, with emphasis on:
- Grassroots responses to technological breakdown
- Creative methods for sustainable futures
- More-than-human approaches to urban systems
- Blockchain applications for food justice
Her publications demonstrate sustained focus on citizen-led environmental action, with recent work exploring how creative practices stimulate societal transformation and how blockchain technologies might reconfigure human-environment relations. Key thematic threads include repair economies, community sensing, and algorithmic governance of ecological systems.
Research Grants:
- Co-Investigator, Algorithmic Food Justice project (Not-Equal Network+ grant, ESPRC funded)
She leads collaborative projects including CreaTures (transformative creative practices) and Citizen Sense (participatory environmental monitoring), working with international networks of artists, designers, and community activists.
