[Week 6] It's beginning to look a lot like research

This week I have been pulling together my festive reading list, an annual task that pre-dates my doctoral studies and an activity I am most pleased to report brings me great joy every year. The loathing for writing I hold in my heart is thankfully balanced with a deep love of reading. Not a fan of fiction, my childhood Christmas lists were full of requests for books of facts, lists and trivia. I had a hungry brain, and it didn’t think much of stories, why waste time with fiction when fact is so fascinating?

Pickle the kitten helping me with my writing woes

The internal struggle for lexical balance has now torn at my soul for the best part of three decades; a six-year-old Andrew Lansley once started writing his “Book of Knowledge” – a personal encyclopaedia created to record everything he knew in the hope he would only ever have to write it down once.

A more reflective forty-five-year-old Andrew wonders if this attempt to tackle such a large writing project at such an early age was indeed the genesis of his disdain for the craft. Perhaps the more depressing insight into how I might have viewed writing as a child was that I taught myself to write with both hands (or rather, I thought I did – learning later in life that I am ambidextrous) in case I lost my right hand, so inevitable I thought writing would be to adult life.

Nonetheless reading continues to provide much the needed light in the abyss, so here is the list of publications and reports I am rather looking forward to enjoying over the upcoming festive break:

• MIT Climate Machine – a comprehensive assessment of live music emissions in the UK and US and (potentially) a new foundation for data that could help structure a civic level environmental intervention model. Exciting!

• Peril and Promise: Tackling Climate Change in Latin America and the Caribbean – having recently discovered the scale of innovation being generated on the front line of environmental impacts I am keen to learn much more.

• Culture Makes Liverpool – this document outlines the cultural strategy for the city between 2025-30 and would like to understand where my research might sit.

• Local Authority Climate Action Beyond Carbon Budgets – a recent position paper published by the Tyndall Institute providing insights for local authorities.

• The dynamics of coworker envy in the green innovation landscape: Mediating and moderating effects on employee environmental commitment and non-green behaviour in the hospitality industry – my leftfield choice for festive reading, it was the only research I could find that explored green innovation interrelations from a behavioural analysis perspective which may provide clues in promoting a harmonious approach within the sector in implementing change together.

My cat Beaks, forever hidden in zoom calls

I’ve decided I’m going to push back the second revision of my PAF until early January. With a combination of new publications and industry coalitions emerging as we exit 2025, it feels best to incorporate the latest possible perspectives and data into my next draft otherwise I suspect I’ll just want to immediately revisit it in the new year.

The opportunity to establish knowledge exchange networks for sharing best practice, as well as the tantalising prospect of a deep dive into CO2e methodologies contained within the upcoming MIT Climate Machine report is almost too many presents to count!