Professor Charlotte (Charlie) Burns (she/her)

BA, MA, PhD

School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations

Professor of Politics

charlotte.burns@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 1703

Elmfield Building

Full contact details

Professor Charlotte (Charlie) Burns
School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations
Elmfield Building
Northumberland Road
Sheffield
S10 2TU

Profile: I am an expert on EU and UK environmental policy, and on the EU's institutions, specifically the European Parliament. I joined Sheffield as a Professorial Fellow in September 2017. I became Director of the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership in February 2020 and served as Head of the former Department of Politics and International Relations from September 2022 to 2024. I currently hold a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (September 2025 to 2028).

Qualifications: I studied a BA in Philosophy and Politics at the University of York, and an MA in EU studies at the University of Newcastle. I then worked for two years in Brussels as a research assistant for the Chair of the European Parliament's Environment Committee before commencing a PhD in Politics at the University of Sheffield. I held an ESRC post-doctoral fellowship at Sheffield, a lectureship in EU politics at the University of Aberystwyth, an RCUK fellowship in democracy and governance at the University of Leeds before joining the Environment Department at the University of York, where I was made Senior Lecturer in 2015. I re-joined Sheffield in 2017.

Research interests: I am interested in the factors shaping environmental resilience in the face of external challenges. More specifically - what puts environmental policy goals at risk and what enables them to withstand change and be resilient? From 2013 onwards I worked extensively on the implications of EU membership for UK and EU environmental policy with colleagues from Queen's University Belfast and the University of East Anglia, and on the implications of Brexit for agricultural policy with colleagues at the University of Sheffield. You can find out more about the Brexit work on www.brexitenvironment.co.uk.

I am co-author of a leading EU politics textbook, Politics on the European Union (OUP) with Owen Parker and Simon Bulmer.

I have an on-going interest in the environmental behaviour of the European Parliament and EU environmental policy and EU decision-making. These interests have come together to serve as the foundation for my Leverhulme fellowship which applies a critical political ecology frame to EU environmental policy.

Publications

Journal articles

Jones LB, Burns CJ & Arnold KE (2025) Systems-based analysis of the factors affecting the use of academic research in European chemical assessment and management. Environment International, 205, 109859.
Tsouvalis J, Burns C, Fajardo-Escoffié J, Rose DC, Hartley S & Little R (2025) Co-design in practice: bringing STS to post-Brexit agricultural policy. Science, Technology and Human Values, 50(3), 553-581. View this article in WRRO
Rosamond J, Dupont C, Lerum Boasson E, Burns C, Maltby T, Oberthür S, Parks L, Szulecki K, Tobin P & Torney D (2024) The urgent need for social science and humanities knowledge for climate action in Europe. PLOS Climate, 3(7). View this article in WRRO
Jones LB & Burns CJ (2024) REACHing for divergence?—UK chemical regulation post‐Brexit. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, 20(5), 1529-1538. View this article in WRRO

Book chapters

Moulton J & Burns C (2023) The Climate Crisis: A creeping catastrophe for the EU In Rhinard M, Nugent N & Paterson W (Ed.), Crises and Challenges for the European Union (pp. 184-198). Bloomsbury Publishing

Research group: Member of the Environmental Politics and Public Policy Research Groups

Grants: Leverhulme Trust 'A Critical Political Ecology of European Union Environmental Policy' (Principal Investigator) September 2025 to August 2028, Total £211, 803.

OfS/Research England Yorkshire Consortium for Equity in Doctoral Education, Workstream leader on mentoring, Total Grant £799, 514, 1 February 2022 to 31 January 2026. (Stepped down as workstream lead Summer 2023 due to workload of being Head of Department).

ESRC ‘Beastly Business: Examining the illegal trade in Europe of Bears, Eels and Songbirds’ (Co-investigator) Total Grant £852,844. 1st March 2021 to 31st July 2023.

ESRC Governance after Brexit Grants, ‘Agri-environmental governance post-Brexit: co-production of policy framework’ (Co-investigator) Total Grant £745,350. 1 February 2019 to 31 July 2020.

ESRC Brexit Priority Grants, ‘Divergence, Dismantling and Contestation: Brexit and the Repoliticisation of UK Environmental Governance’ (Principal Investigator) Total Grant £222,290. 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2019.

Leverhulme Trust ‘Evaluating the Impact of Austerity upon Environmental Policy in Europe’(Principal Investigator) Total Grant £224, 372. October 2014 to September 2017.

European Commission Cutting Edge Approaches for Pollution in Cities, (CAPACITIE) (Co-Investigator) Total Grant £2,652,676. 1st October 2013 to 30th September 2017.

ESRC ‘Is the European Parliament an Environmental Champion?’ (Co-Investigator) Total Grant £92,172. 24 November 2007 – 31st October 2009.

Teaching activities: I am not currently teaching but I teach on environmental politics and policy and the European Union, most recently I co-convened a level one module 'Planet Politics'.

Professional activities and memberships: I serve on the Editorial Boards of Environmental Politics and the Journal of European Public Policy.

Phd Supervision

I am currently supervising two interdisciplinary PhDs funded by NERC who are working on chemicals policy, and ecotoxicological pollution of the urban environment. I have supervised on a range of environmental topics and regions from across the world.