Dr Rorie Beswick-Parsons

School of Geography and Planning

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

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r.parsons@sheffield.ac.uk

Full contact details

Dr Rorie Beswick-Parsons
School of Geography and Planning
Geography and Planning Building
Winter Street
Sheffield
S3 7ND
Profile

Rorie gained a BA (Hons) degree in Geography from the University of Hull. This led to an ESRC funded Masters in Planning and Environment Research and PhD at Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape (2013-2018).

Research interests

Rorie Parsons is a Geographer with a research focus that is concerned with issues of sustainability and understanding social change.

His recent research pays attention to two questions: (1) how consumer practices and patterning of everyday life change when accommodating alternative packaging systems; and (2) how business practices, technologies, and markets interact in processes of change (or resistance) in respect to packaging. His work approaches these from both a historical and contemporary standpoint through a mixture of research methodologies, most notably, ethnography, archival analysis, and secondary data research.

Prior to his current role, Rorie has contributed to several major multidisciplinary projects as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate, with a particular emphasis on exploring social and technical solutions to the challenges of plastics. These include Plastics: Redefining single-use (EPSRC), Many Happy Returns - Enabling reusable packaging systems (NERC), and Reducing plastic packaging and food waste through product innovation simulation (NERC). He is also currently a contributor to the Horizon Europe funded project, Business-driven systemic solutions for sustainable plastic packaging reuse schemes in mass market applications.

Publications

Journal articles