Kerry Waylen

• How are efforts for adaptive (co)governance shaped and constrained by existing institutions and ways of working? How do the various goals for environmental governance - i.e. to be more joined up, to more effective, to be more efficient - interact? What are the implications for adapting or reforming existing and policy and governance arrangements?
• When might it make sense to adopt new concepts and instruments for environmental management? How can we best understand the challenges and consequences of implementing such new concepts, especially those - such as the 'Ecosystem Approach' or 'Nature-Based Solutions' - that aim to holistically connect multiple issues?
• How are different knowledges produced and used in collaboration and decision-making? If and how do concepts (such as 'ecosystem services' or 'natural capital') or tools (such as scenario-planning) influence processes of knowledge co-production, including in science-policy interfaces? How do monitoring and evaluation programmes reflect and shape expectations of knowledge use?
• How do efforts to encourage more collaborative and participatory approaches in environmental management and governance play out, and what are the tensions and interactions with other drivers and approaches?

Kerry's main ongoing research projects

• Kerry works on when and how to enrol private sector actors and financiers for sustainability, within the new European-funded 'MERLIN' project, focused on catchment-based Nature-Based Solutions (NbS). MERLIN started in October 2021 and runs for 4 years.
• During 2021 she has collaborated with Robin Pakeman and Mark Wilkinson on a SEFARI fellowship which connects their disciplinary perspectives to identify a framework for implementing and evaluating NbS in Scotland.
• She manages a package of work on 'Effective Water Management', and within this leading work to explore if and how multiple goals may be appraised and delivered.  This also encompasses exploration of how interacting policy instruments shape consideration of tradeoffs in natural resource management, and the opportunities for 'new' private sector actors or new instruments such as Payments for Ecosystem Services. This is funded by the Scottish Government RESAS Strategic Research Programme 2016-2022.
• Within the recent project MAGIC 'Moving Towards Adaptive Governance in Complexity: Informing Nexus Security', funded by EU H2020, she carried out transdisciplinary research to prompt reflection on the suitability of European policy processes for nexus governance, particularly in relation to sustainable agriculture. This formally finished in 2016-2020 but some interactions and covid-delayed outputs continue into 2021.

Kerry's current work predominantly uses qualitative research methods, e.g. collecting data from semi-structured interviews, workshops, participant observation, analysed using both inductive and deductive approaches.  She also has expertise in quantitative methods for primary and secondary data collection and analysis. She has an established track record in project management, stakeholder engagement, line management, student supervision, data management and research ethics.

Kerry currently co-supervises 1 PhD student: Kirsty Holstead, who is building understanding of community water governance, funded by a Hydronation scholarship, with Dr Shona Russell at the University of St Andrews. She previously co-supervised Sam Poskitt, who is exploring the potential of scenario-planning to support learning for sustainable development, joint funded by ESRC and the James Hutton Institute, with Dr Andrew Ainslie at the University of Reading. Sam obtained his PhD in March 2018 and now works at the University of Reading on the participatory extension work in developing countries.

Kerry is a trustee of the Orskov Foundation, a charitable foundation that supports students and communities to develop sustainable land use to support livelihoods in lower-income countries.