Professor Steffen Böhm
Professor in Organisation and Sustainability
+44 (0) 1326 259090
G10
Science and Engineering Research Support Facility (SERSF):, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall, TR10 9FE, UK
Steffen Boehm is a Professor in Organisation & Sustainability at the University of Exeter Business School. He completed a BA in Business Administration at Lancaster, a MA in Organisation Studies at Warwick, and a PhD entitled ‘The Political Event: Impossibilities of Repositioning Organisation Theory’, also at Warwick. Prior to joining Exeter in January 2016, he was Professor of Management & Sustainability and Founding Director of the Essex Sustainability Institute (ESI) at the University of Essex.
Professor Boehm is also a Visiting Professor at Uppsala University, Sweden, and at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden. He has taught and held visiting positions at universities around the world, including Uppsala University (Sweden), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, University of St Andrews (Scotland), University of Innsbruck (Austria), Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), and Federal University of Rio Grande du Sul (Brazil).
Professor Boehm was a co-founder of the open-access journals ephemera: theory & politics in organization as well as Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements. He is also co-founder and co-editor of the new open-access publishing press MayFlyBooks. He has published five books: Repositioning Organization Theory (Palgrave), Against Automobility (Blackwell), Upsetting the Offset: The Political Economy of Carbon Markets (Mayfly), The Atmosphere Business (Mayfly), and Ecocultures: Blueprints for Sustainable Communities (Routledge). He has published in, and is reviewer for, leading academic journals, including Organisational Studies, Environment and Planning A., Journal of Business Ethics, Organization, Global Networks, The Sociological Review, Business Ethics: A European Review, Social Movement Studies, Capital & Class, Critical Perspectives of International Business, and Scandinavian Journal of Management. He is Editorial Review Board member of Organization Studies.
Professor Boehm also publishes short articles aimed at the wider public. He has written over 25 articles in The Conversation, reaching over 200,000 readers worldwide. He’s also published in The Guardian, the Ecologist, CounterPunch and other publications aimed at the general reader, engaging in contemporary events.
Professor Boehm’s research focuses on a range of social scientific analyses of problems of environmental sustainability and circular economy. He is currently engaged in the following projects, many of which have received funding from a range of sources:
Food and the Circular Economy - South West: Exploring the opportunities available to, and challenges faced by, small and medium-sized enterprises in the food and beverages manufacturing industry as they transition towards the circular economy.
Climate policy and carbon markets: A critical interrogation of the social struggles involved in forming a sustainable climate policy. Prof Boehm has developed critical understandings of the role of carbon markets, arguing that they have been a distraction and that they have had a range of unintended, negative social and environmental consequences.
Sustainability of the food system: Developing an inter-disciplinary and political economy approach to understanding issues of health, well-being, environmental sustainability, work and labour in the global food system. Prof Boehm has run funded research projects on local food systems, agroecological business and health and well-being.
The water-food-energy-environment nexus: Expanding our perspective of the nexus by incorporating political, economic and social issues that are not normally considered by environmental scientists and systems engineers.
Environmental activism amongst social movements, community groups, NGOs, policymakers and company employees and managers: Expanding our perspective of activism to include domains not normally considered to be ‘activist’.
Political economy of organisation: Expanding our view of organisation to include social movement, environmental and political activities. Such a view must include an understanding of the social struggles between business, government and civil society actors who often have different interests, facing divergent material realities and practices.
In all of the above areas he’s been supervising Masters dissertations and PhD theses.
Qualifications
- PhD (University of Warwick)
- MA Organisation Studies (University of Warwick)
- BA(Hons) Business Administration (University of Lancaster)
Research clusters
Research interests
- Political economies and ecologies of management, organisation and sustainability
- Governance of climate change and carbon markets
- Sustainability and governance of the food-energy-water-environment nexus
- Environmental activism inside and outside organisations and corporations
- Contestations and struggles between business, governments and civil society
- Actors, processes, innovations and competitiveness in circular economy
Research projects
Professor Boehm’s research focuses on a range of social scientific analyses of problems of environmental sustainability and circular economy. He is currently engaged in the following projects, many of which have received funding from a range of sources:
Food and the Circular Economy - South West: Exploring the opportunities available to, and challenges faced by, small and medium-sized enterprises in the food and beverages manufacturing industry as they transition towards the circular economy.
Climate policy and carbon markets: A critical interrogation of the social struggles involved in forming a sustainable climate policy. Prof Boehm has developed critical understandings of the role of carbon markets, arguing that they have been a distraction and that they have had a range of unintended, negative social and environmental consequences.
Sustainability of the food system: Developing an inter-disciplinary and political economy approach to understanding issues of health, well-being, environmental sustainability, work and labour in the global food system. Prof Boehm has run funded research projects on local food systems, agroecological business and health and well-being
The water-food-energy-environment nexus: Expanding our perspective of the nexus by incorporating political, economic and social issues that are not normally considered by environmental scientists and systems engineers.
Environmental activism amongst social movements, community groups, NGOs, policymakers and company employees and managers: Expanding our perspective of activism to include domains not normally considered to be ‘activist’.
Political economy of organisation: Expanding our view of organisation to include social movement, environmental and political activities. Such a view must include an understanding of the social struggles between business, government and civil society actors who often have different interests, facing divergent material realities and practices.
In all of the above areas he’s been supervising Masters disserations and PhD theses.
Research Funding Awarded
- 2016-2018: EPSRC: ‘Modelling supply chain optimisation in the food and beverages industry: Helping SMEs in South West England work towards the circular economy’, £483,000 (PI: Böhm).
- 2016-2017: British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship: ‘Environmental Activism within Energy Companies’, £78,958 (PI: Böhm).
- 2015-2017: Swedish Energy Agency: ‘Renewable Energy Activism’, £120,000 (PI: Annika Skoglund)
- 2015-2015: ESRC Nexus Networks: ‘Agroecological Business: Connecting civil society, SMEs and consumers to nature and the land’, £20,000 (PI: Böhm)
- 2013-2015: ESRC seminar series: ‘The Future of our Food: Resilience, Security and Justice in a Global Context’, £30,000 (PI: Böhm)
- 2012-2015: East of England Cooperative Society: ‘The impact of relocalised food systems on wellbeing’, £75,000 (PI: Böhm)
- 2012-2013: British Academy: ‘Assessing the contribution of local food systems to community wellbeing in the East of England’, £10,000 (PI: Böhm)
- 2011-2013: Green Light Trust: ‘Evaluating the Low Carbon Champions project’, £15,000 (PI Böhm)
- 2010-2012: University of Essex: ‘Ecocultures and resilience’, £50,000 (PI Böhm)
- 2009-2010: British Academy, ‘The Social, Economic and Environmental Impacts of Carbon Markets: The Case of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)’, £7500 (PI Böhm)
- 2005-2007: ESRC, ‘Alternative Media and Public Action: Organising the Global Alternative Networks’, RES-155-25-0029, £44,754.78 (PI: Andre Spicer)
Links
- Circular Food research platform
- Ecocultures research platform
- Agroecology research platform
- Personal research website
- The Conversation - Profile and articles
- Twitter - follow me
- Facebook professional page
Key publications | Publications by category | Publications by year
Publications by category
Books
Journal articles
Chapters
Publications by year
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2003
External positions
- 2016 - to date: Visiting Professor, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
- 2015 - to date: Visiting Professor, Uppsala University, Sweden
- 2014 - 2016: Visiting Professor, University of St Andrews, Scotland
- 2006: Visiting Professor, Federal University of Rio Grande du Sul, Brazil
Professor Steffen Boehm takes an inter-disciplinary approach to teaching topics in organisation, sustainability, corporate governance, business ethics, corporate social responsibility, environment and political economy. His teaching is research-led, theoretically astute and practice oriented. He has been teaching at all levels, Undergraduate, Postgraduate, MBA and PhD.
His teaching is informed by his many years of working in the world of business as well as his involvement with policymakers, NGOs, community groups and social movements. His lecturers and classes are hence practice oriented, analysing the organisational realities on the ground. This bottom-up or grassroots perspective is driven by the political and ethical need for students to engage with real social, economic and environmental problems – not just in the privileged world but also in disadvantaged and marginalised communities and countries.
Professor Boehm rarely uses PowerPoint slides, instead favouring a discursive engagement with students who are expected to take notes during lectures and participate in group activities and class discussions. He works with a range of real-world case studies, many of which are based on his many published journal articles and books.