Sarah Boddington

Sarah Boddington is interim HDR convenor and Braithwaite Research Fellow, based at Regnet, the school of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australia National University (ANU). Her research examines how diverse groups experience and navigate climate mitigation policy and lower carbon technologies. She has published on building norms of climate policy support in conservative groups, group responses to electrification, and how environmental groups conceive and enact climate justice. 

She is an interdisciplinary scholar and has used a variety of methodologies, including community interviews, elite interviews, document analysis, a national survey, and a systematic review. She is experienced in setting up and conducting research partnerships, both as a policy partner in government and a research partner. She is committed to policy impact and has presented on her research to a variety of advocacy and community organisations, including Electrify Canberra and Re-alliance. She previously co-convened a seminar series on Climate Change and Society, bringing together academics across ANU.

At the School of Regulation and Global Governance, Sarah is teaching a new course Governance Beyond the State. She has tutored and given guest lectures on electrification, norm change, climate advocacy and practice change.

Prior to academia, she had a career in international development, including in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade where she led on approaches to political and socially informed development. She represented the Australian Government in intergovernmental forums in the Pacific, the OECD-DAC, and in Nepal. She has lived and worked in Nepal, Cambodia, Mongolia and Pakistan. In her early career, she worked as a legal aid and community lawyer.

Research interests

Sarah is interested in how the energy transition and climate mitigation processes can meet the needs of diverse groups. Within this, she is particularly interested in cooperation and leadership across difference, whether policies and markets meet the needs of communities, and policy influence including through changing how we think and talk about problems.

Qualifications

Currently completing - interdisciplinary PhD, The many social worlds of climate mitigation: how groups differently engage with practice and social change, The Australian National University, Jan 2022 → current

Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development, Masters, Australian National University, 2008

Law / Arts (Political Science), Bachelor, University of New South Wales, 1998.