Dr Adrian Ely

Role

Aside from teaching responsibilities (see below), I also act as Head of Impact and Engagement at the STEPS Centre (a collaboration between SPRU and IDS), and co-investigator in two projects of the Centre for Bioneworking. 

In the first phase of the STEPS Centre, I was involved in two projects.  I convened Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto, a project that drew upon the expertise of colleagues at SPRU and IDS and also involved our partner institutions across the world.  The project commemorated the fortieth anniversary of the Sussex Manifesto by putting together a new and forward-looking vision for science, technology and development in 2010. The ideas and networks from the Manifesto project are being taken forward through the impact and engagement work in the STEPS Centre's second phase.

I also worked on the "Rethinking Regulation" project.  With Chinese partners, we investigated the regulation of seeds and drugs at international, national and sub-national levels, and talked to farmers and patients in order to better understand how these regulatory frameworks and their associated assumptions translated to the rural realities where the technologies are actually being used.  My interest in biotechnology regulation and governance, and the research methods used in the Rethinking Regulation project (including backward-mapping) are being taken forward in my work on bionetworking.

Prior to STEPS, I was involved in the European Commission FP6-funded integrated project "Safe Foods". Working with colleagues from SPRU (Andy Stirling), Dialogik (Ortwin Renn and Marion Dreyer) and the University of Maastricht (Ellen Vos and Frank Wendler), the research centred on addressing the challenges of uncertainty and public engagement in European food safety governance.

In 2006 I finished writing up my doctoral research, which since 2001 had been supported by an ESRC-NERC interdisciplinary studentship. My DPhil project was concerned with the use of scientific evidence in the regulatory appraisal of genetically modified insect resistant crops. I focussed on specific ecological issues associated with the deliberate release of Bt maize (corn) in four case-study countries; the US, UK, France and Austria. By drawing on the theoretical approaches of critical science and social constructivism, and the wider literature around risk and uncertainty, my study examined the role that science does, can and should play in decision-making over Bt maize and new technologies more generally.

During the course of my doctoral studies I benefited from carrying out research while based at a number of institutions:
2004 September-05 January: Visiting Fellow, Program on Science, Technology and Society, J F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA
2003 October-November: Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Science, Technology and Society (IAS-STS), Graz, Austria
2003 May-July: Visiting Researcher, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), Ivry-sur-Seine, France

I currently co-convene the final year course for undergraduate biologists, "Biotechnology, Innovation and Science Policy", and also convene two courses for SPRU MSc students: "The Management of Technological Risks" and "Innovation for Sustainability".  I contribute a session on "Technology, Risk and Uncertainty" to the Sussex MBA.

Leach, Melissa, Rokstrom, Johan, Raskin, Paul, Scoones, Ian Christopher, Stirling, Andrew C, Smith, Adrian, Thompson, John, Millstone, Erik, Ely, Adrian, Arond, Elisa, Folke, Carl and Olsson, Per (2012) Transforming innovation for sustainability. Ecology and Society, 17 (2). p. 11. ISSN 1708-3087

Jin, Chenggang, Ely, Adrian, Fang, Lijie and Liang, Xiaoyun (2011) Framing a global health risk from the bottom-up: user perceptions and practices around antibiotics in four villages in China. Health, Risk and Society, 13 (5). pp. 433-449. ISSN 1369-8575

Van Zwanenberg, Patrick, Ely, Adrian and Smith, Adrian (2011) Regulating Technology: International harmonisation and local realities. Pathways to Sustainability . EarthScan. ISBN 9781849712477

Chen, Yantai and Ely, Adrian (2011) Health Biotechnology Innovation for Social Sustainability -A Perspective from China. Working Paper. STEPS Centre.

Ely, Adrian, Van Zwanenberg, Patrick and Stirling, Andrew (2011) New Models of Technology Assessment for Development. Working Paper. STEPS Centre.

Van Zwanenberg, Patrick, Ely, Adrian, Smith, Adrian, Chuanbo, Chen, Shijun, Ding, Fazio, Maria-Eugenia and Goldberg, Laura (2010) Regulatory harmonization and agricultural biotechnology in Argentina and China: critical assessment of state-centred and decentred approaches. Regulation and Governance, 5 (2). pp. 166-186. ISSN 1748-5991

Ely, Adrian V, Leach, Melissa, Scoones, Ian and Stirling, Andy C (2010) A New Manifesto for innovation, sustainability and development - Response to Rhodes and Sulston. European Journal of Development Research, 22 (4). pp. 586-588. ISSN 0957-8811