• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer
  • Accessibility options
University of Brighton
  • About us
  • Business and
    employers
  • Alumni and
    supporters
  • Current
    students
  • Staff
  • Accessibility
    options
Open menu
Home
Home
  • Close
  • Study
    • Courses and subjects
    • Find a course
    • A-Z course list
    • Explore our subjects
    • Academic departments
    • Open days
    • Order a prospectus
    • Ask a question
    • Studying here
    • Why choose Brighton?
    • Accommodation and locations
    • Applying
    • Undergraduate
    • Postgraduate
    • The Student Contract
    • International students
    • Fees and finance
    • Advice and help
    • Advice for students
    • Advice for parents and carers
    • Advice for schools and teachers
  • Research and enterprise
    • Research and enterprise
    • Brighton Futures
    • Centres of Research and Enterprise Excellence (COREs)
    • Research and enterprise groups
    • Research and enterprise newsletters
    • Research and Enterprise Strategic Plan
    • Meet our professors
    • Inaugural lectures
    • Postgraduate research degrees
    • Apply for a research degree
    • Funding opportunities and studentships
    • Meet our postgraduate research students
    • International community
    • Postgraduate research student development
    • Applying for Research Masters degrees (MRes)
    • Researcher development
    • Early career researchers
    • Investing in research careers
    • Research concordat
    • Academic staff search
    • Enterprise
    • Consultancy services
    • Equipment for hire
    • Enterprise projects
    • Business services
  • About us
  • Business and employers
  • Alumni, supporters and giving
  • Current students
  • Staff
  • Accessibility options
Search our site
brighton pier at sunset
Academic staff
  • Search

Dr Mary Gearey

Dr Mary Gearey is the University of Brighton’s Daphne Jackson Research Fellow, based in the School of Environment and Technology. A social scientist by training, she undertakes empirical qualitative fieldwork to explore the corresponding relationships between practices of community resilience and water resources policy, planning and management in the context of sustainable futures. Her work is inter-disciplinary, orientated around emerging modes of governance within water resources management, informed by her background in International Development. She has lived and worked across Africa and Europe in collaboration with community and environmental groups to develop grounded working practices in sustainable water futures. Her current work focuses on the following areas:

  • Community responses to changing water environments
  • Social-ecological systems resilience
  • Socio-political dimensions of integrated water resource management
Mary-Gearey

My research interests

My research interests lie in seeking to bridge the disjuncture between climate change science, water resources management practice and local articulations and experiences of changing water environments. At heart my research explores why climate change narratives are still failing to resonate with most citizens, and are still not embedded within organisational praxis, and seeks to determine what approaches may close these gaps in order to support transitions towards sustainable futures. Inherent to this line of questioning are explorations of emergent forms of citizenship, discourses of governance and the links between landscape, taskscape and community within the late capitalist era. I draw on the work of Karen Bakker, Neil Adger and Tim Ingold to undertake empirical qualitative fieldwork which interrogates the political, cultural and physical intersections which co-create our sense of place, and our intimate, immediate relationship with our water environments.

My work is critically engaged with understanding how developed economies organise and manage their freshwater resources with regards to transitioning towards sustainable futures in the context of climate change. This involves moving iteratively between looking at the macro scale – analysing the policies, institutions and regulatory regimes which shape water resources management – and the micro scale – exploring how local communities experience changes to their local water environments and the myriad ways in which they articulate and broadcast their responses. In particular my work has sought to interrogate if practises, actions, behaviours and attitudes towards local water resources, at both macro and micro scales, within the context of sustainable futures, could be deemed ‘resilient’, necessarily involving a radical critique of the term ‘resilience’ itself.

Research activity

Current research projects:

  • Community responses to changing water environments within the River Adur valley, West Sussex - Daphne Jackson Research Fellowship
  • Hydrocitizenship
  • WetlandLIFE

Previous research projects:

  • AQUADAPT

Research Centres and Groups:

  • Centre for Aquatic Environments
  • Centre of Resilience for Social Justice
  • Centre of Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics
  • Society, Space and Environment Research Group

Contact me

Dr Mary Gearey
Research Fellow

Environment and Technology
Moulsecoomb
Brighton
BN2 4GJ

Telephone: +441273642380

Email: M.Gearey@brighton.ac.uk

Biography

During my A levels I was politically active, campaigning for press freedom, the end of Apartheid, and supporting Amnesty, PETA and, as was de rigueur in the late 1980s, protesting against government cuts to social housing, education and the National Health Service. This political activism led me to want to underpin my enthusiasm to help shape a fairer society, with equal opportunities for all, with academic training. So I undertook my BA (hons) degree in Politics at Leeds University, specialising in development studies and international relations, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan rural livelihoods.

After my degree I continued to be involved in campaigning for press freedom, and I worked for a number of years in London as a copywriter and editor, before joining the charitable sector to work on team projects. This phase lead me to re-engage with development theory, and I recognised that I needed to have some hands on experience to really understand how macro scale politics affects peoples everyday lives. I took a sabbatical from work and joined a small, but dynamic NGO, the Marlborough-Brandt group, in their offices in Gunjur, the Gambia, West Africa. Here I utilised my professional skills and academic training in supporting a number of women-lead micro-finance projects.

This synthesis of pragmatic grass-root based initiatives within the context of rural development- how impactful, well planned, supported and locally generated interventions can help rural economies – was the spur for me to undertake a part time MSc in International Development at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), part of the University of London. Whilst studying for my MSc I worked for Save the Children (UK) as their Regional Co-coordinator for West and Southern Africa, helping to support programme officers, both remotely and within Accra, Ghana.

Having completed my MSc (merit), and desiring more exposure to programme work, I wanted to move from the INGO level to working again directly with Community Based Organisations (CBOs). My husband and I relocated to Kampala, Uganda, working under DANIDA (the Danish International Development Agency) to support the National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE). NAPE at this time were campaigning around the negative impacts to local livelihoods and cultural cohesiveness that the proposed chain of hydropower dams would make to rural villages along a portion of the White Nile, including the destruction of the Bujagali Falls, a place of great spiritual significance for many neighbouring communities. My work with NAPE increasingly focused on advocacy work, questioning the energy-water discourse which privileged economic development over the needs and wants of local lives and indigenous cultures. During my MSc my thesis supervisor was Professor Tony Allan, a world renowned water management expert, whose focus on the politics embedded in national water strategies, and in particular the asymmetry between water governor and water subject, had a significant impact on my own thinking around sustainable water policy. Influenced by both my academic and development work, I decided to undertake a PhD in Integrated Water Resources Management, with a particular focus on the role of legitimacy in enabling new forms of water governance to emerge at the river catchment level.

My PhD at Cranfield University’s Water Science Institute was funded through an EU scholarship, and as part of this I also worked as a workpackage co-ordinator on an EU project called AQUADAPT, exploring the social dimensions of water scarcity within five European countries – Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands, France and the UK. This work integrated both quantitative and qualitative empirical fieldwork and involved generating a large data set detailing household water behaviours across all five countries. I remained at Cranfield for a following two years as a post-doctoral researcher. During this time I was awarded funding by the Royal Academy of Engineering to take up a three month placement within the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria, South Africa, working alongside Professor Anthony Turton. Professor Turton’s work critiquing South Africa’s emergent post-reconciliation water sector, illuminated issues regarding the possibility of a universal application of a constitutional right to water, and embedded for me the essential importance of managing water resources with issues regarding sustainability, equity and local, meaningful participation at the fore.

After my two year post-doctoral research work my husband, also an academic, was offered a Fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley (UBC). How could we refuse! So with our two young children, who were then aged 1 and 3, we packed up our house and travelled around the world – starting in Malaysia, then Hong Kong, followed by Costa Rica then finally arriving in California. After the end of the Fellowship we moved to the South of France to enjoy some family time together before my eldest child started school. When we returned to the UK we realised after enjoying all the wonderful landscapes and sunshine overseas that we had to live near the sea. We were drawn to the magnificence of the South Downs, so we relocated to Sussex in late 2012.

In 2013 I was awarded a Daphne Jackson Research Fellowship, to design and lead on an empirically focused project, exploring community responses to changes in local water environments along the River Adur valley in West Sussex. In particular my work has sought to interrogate if practises, actions, behaviours and attitudes towards local water resources, within the context of sustainable futures, could be deemed ‘resilient’. The work has been hugely rewarding and I am delighted to be continuing to contribute to the prestigious research community within the University of Brighton. I have been delighted to have joined the dynamic, diverse team within the School of Environment and Technology (SET). There is a strong focus on working between disciplines, and with colleagues across the University. This creates a lively, dynamic research atmosphere, where the research work of the student body is as valued as the co-collaboration amongst the academic staff, in an atmosphere within which motivated hard-working students can flourish. It’s a great place to work -plus I get to look at the sea every day!

Research output

Number of items: 12.

Gearey, Mary (2017) Resilience in the Post-Welfare Inner City: Voluntary Sector Geographies in London, Los Angeles and Sydney by Geoffrey DeVerteuil, Policy Press, Bristol, 2016, 300pp., paper $61.50 (ISBN 978-1447316640) Canadian Geographer, Quebec, Canada.

Gearey, Mary (2016) Stories from the English riverbank: How riparian communities interpret, articulate and action water resources sustainability. European Journal of Sustainable Development, 5 (4). pp. 141-150. ISSN 2239-5938

Gearey, Mary (2016) What community stories can tell us about changing drainage management approaches in the River Adur catchment In: South Downs Research Conference 2016, South Downs Research Centre Midhurst, West Sussex,UK.,6 July 2016..

Gearey, Mary (2016) Participation or exploitation: How can concepts of community and privatization coalesce around water efficiency approaches? British Journal of Environment and Climate Change, 6 (3). pp. 2231-4784. ISSN 2231-4784

Gearey, Mary (2014) Participation or exploitation: how can concepts of community and privitisation coalesce around water efficiency approaches? In: Proceedings of the Water Efficiency Conference, 2014, Brighton, UK, 9-11 September 2014.

Gearey, Mary and Jeffrey, Paul (2010) Using legitimacy dialogues to explore responses to flooding issues in a UK catchment Water and Environment Journal, 24 (4). pp. 320-327. ISSN 0951-7359

Jeffrey, Paul and Gearey, Mary (2006) Integrated water resources management: lost on the road from ambition to realisation? Water Science and Technology, 53 (1). pp. 1-8. ISSN 0273-1223

Gearey, Mary and Jeffrey, Paul (2006) Concepts of legitimacy within the context of adaptive water management strategies Ecological Economics, 60 (1). pp. 129-137. ISSN 0921-8009

Aledo Tur, Antonio, Ortiz Noguera, Guadalupe, Jeffrey, Paul, Gearey, Mary, Rinaudo, Jean Daniel, Loubier, Sebastien, Veljanouski, Tatjana and Ravbar, Natasa (2006) Socio-cultural influences on water utilisation: a comparative analysis In: Koundouri, P., Karousakis, K., Assimacopoulous, D. and Jeffrey, P., eds. Water management in arid and semi arid regions: Interdisciplinary perspectives. Elgar, Aldershot, UK, pp. 201-225. ISBN 1845424239

Jeffrey, Paul and Gearey, Mary (2006) Consumer reactions to water conservation policy instruments In: Memon, F. and Butler, D., eds. Water demand management. IWA, London, pp. 305-326. ISBN 1843390787

Gearey, Mary and Jeffrey, P. (2005) Domestic consumer perceptions of the legitimacy of water resource management options: A case study of the River Nene catchment, UK Water and Environment Journal, 19 (4). pp. 312-322. ISSN 0951-7359

Gearey, Mary (2004) Championing good governance through an appreciation of legitimacy dialogues In: 14th Stockholm Water Symposium, August 16-20 2004, City Conference Centre, Stocholm, Sweden.

This list was generated on Mon Apr 23 17:14:57 2018 BST.

Awards

Daphne Jackson Research Fellowship.

Back to top
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

Contact us

University of Brighton
Mithras House
Lewes Road
Brighton
BN2 4AT

Main switchboard 01273 600900

Course enquiries

Contacts directory

Report a problem with this page

Quick links

  • Courses
  • Open days
  • Order a prospectus
  • Academic departments
  • Academic staff
  • Professional services departments
  • Jobs
  • Privacy policy
  • Libraries
  • Term dates
  • Maps
  • News and events
  • Graduation
  • Site information

Information for

  • Current students
  • International students
  • Media/press
  • Careers advisers/teachers
  • Parents/carers
  • Business/employers
  • Alumni/supporters
  • Suppliers
  • Local residents