Dr Warren Pearce

BA (Hons), MA, MA, PhD

Department of Sociological Studies

Senior Lecturer

(He/him)

warren.pearce@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 6454

The Wave

Full contact details

Dr Warren Pearce
Department of Sociological Studies
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH

Profile

Warren is Senior Lecturer within iHuman, leading the Institute’s "Knowing Humans" research theme. His academic interests began with a BA in Geography & Politics at Sheffield, where he developed an interest in environmental politics. On leaving the university, he spent a decade working in music retail and distribution, including his own wholesale business specialising in dance music. He then returned to academia, completing MAs in Public Policy and Research Methods at the University of Nottingham, while working for Intelligence East Midlands, a regional research observatory. He completed a PhD on the local implementation of climate change policy in 2013, where he found that carefully calibrated, scientifically-derived emissions targets had very different meanings at national and local levels, with significant implications for the implementation of climate policy.

From 2012-2016, Warren was a Research Fellow within the University of Nottingham’s Institute for Science and Society working on Making Science Public, a wide-ranging five-year Leverhulme Trust programme focused on the relationship between science, politics and publics. He then joined the University of Sheffield as a Research Fellow in 2016, as Principal Investigator on the ESRC-funded Future Research Leaders project ‘Making Climate Social’, focusing on how climate change is represented and discussed on social media and other digital platforms. In 2019, he was promoted to Senior Lecturer.

Warren is a Contributing Author for the Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), assessing the literature on the role of values in climate science and the communication of climate change on both mainstream and social media. This section of the report will, for the first time, frame the IPCC’s physical science assessment in terms of the social context for scientific knowledge, responding to a call from the IPCC leadership to attend more explicitly to such issues. He has also been an invited speaker at the United Nations’ COP23 conference, the Met Office and the Royal Society, written for The Guardian, and had his research reported across international media including Der Spiegel, De Volkskrant, Newsweek, Scientific American and The Independent.

Research interests

Warren’s research explores how science is used in public debates about politics and policy, with a current focus on three areas:

- the use of scientific evidence, advice and assessment in policy work

- how digital platforms are changing experts and expertise

- the role of images in online science communication

He has researched these themes extensively through a series of journal articles examining the public life of climate change. He has also published research on other prominent cases such as plant genome editing, autism, responsible innovation and the use of randomised controlled trials in policy. Warren employs interpretive, digital and comparative research methods, collaborating with information designers to rethink approaches to visualisation for interpretive research. He has published in a wide range of high-impact academic journals across the natural, social and health sciences such as Nature, Nature Climate Change, Public Understanding of Science, Environmental Communication, PLOS-ONE, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Policy Sciences and Policy & Politics.

Warren is a team member of two international projects funded by the US National Science Foundation investigating expertise and science advice in the pandemic: CoMpCore based at Harvard and Cornell Universities and EScAPE based at the University of Colorado. He sits on the Board of Science in Public, the Steering Committee of Sheffield’s Digital Society Network, and is an enthusiastic public communicator of research via Twitter and blogs. He also contributes to the department’s STeMiS research theme.

Publications

Edited books

Martin P, de Saille S, Liddiard K & Pearce W (Eds.) (2022) Being Human During Covid-19. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

Journal articles

Asayama S, De Pryck K, Beck S, Cointe B, Edwards PN, Guillemot H, Gustafsson KM, Hartz F, Hughes H, Lahn B , Leclerc O et al (2023) Three institutional pathways to envision the future of the IPCC. Nature Climate Change, 13(9), 877-880.
Pearce W & De Gaetano C (2021) Google Images, cambio climático y la desaparición de los humanos(19). View this article in WRRO
Pearce W (2020) Trouble in the trough : how uncertainties were downplayed in the UK’s science advice on Covid-19. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 7(1). View this article in WRRO
Raman S & Pearce W (2020) Learning the lessons of Climategate: A cosmopolitan moment in the public life of climate science. WIREs Climate Change, 11(6).
Pearce W, Özkula SM, Greene AK, Teeling L, Bansard JS, Omena JJ & Rabello ET (2020) Visual cross-platform analysis: digital methods to research social media images. Information, Communication & Society, 23(2), 161-180. View this article in WRRO
Pearce W (2019) Troubles in climate journalism. Issues in Science and Technology, 36(1), 12-13. View this article in WRRO
Asayama S, Bellamy R, Geden O, Pearce W & Hulme M (2019) Why setting a climate deadline is dangerous. Nature Climate Change, 9(8), 570-572.
Helliwell R, Hartley S & Pearce W (2019) NGO perspectives on the social and ethical dimensions of plant genome-editing. Agriculture and Human Values. View this article in WRRO
Dommett K & Pearce W (2019) What do we know about public attitudes towards experts? Reviewing survey data in the United Kingdom and European Union. Public Understanding of Science. View this article in WRRO
Pearce W, Niederer S, Özkula SM & Sánchez Querubín N (2019) The social media life of climate change: Platforms, publics, and future imaginaries. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 10(2). View this article in WRRO
Hollin G & Pearce W (2018) Autism scientists' reflections on the opportunities and challenges of public engagement: a qualitative analysis.. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. View this article in WRRO
Pearce W, Mahony M & Raman S (2018) Science advice for global challenges: Learning from trade-offs in the IPCC. Environmental Science & Policy, 80, 125-131. View this article in WRRO
Pearce W, Hartley S, Helliwell R & O'Neill L (2018) Reply to Tagliabue. EMBO reports, 19(4).
Oliver K & Pearce W (2017) Three lessons from evidence-based medicine and policy: increase transparency, balance inputs and understand power. Palgrave Communications, 3. View this article in WRRO
Helliwell R, Hartley S, Pearce W & O'Neill L (2017) Why are NGOs sceptical of genome editing? NGOs’ opposition to agricultural biotechnologies is rooted in scepticism about the framing of problems and solutions, rather than just emotion and dogma. EMBO Reports, 18(12), 2090-2093. View this article in WRRO
Pearce W, Grundmann R, Hulme M, Raman S, Hadley Kershaw E & Tsouvalis J (2017) A Reply to Cook and Oreskes on Climate Science Consensus Messaging. Environmental Communication: a journal of nature and culture, 11(6), 736-739. View this article in WRRO
Pearce W, Grundmann R, Hulme M, Raman S, Hadley Kershaw E & Tsouvalis J (2017) Beyond Counting Climate Consensus. Environmental Communication, 11(6), 723-730. View this article in WRRO
Hartley S, Pearce W & Taylor A (2016) Against the tide of depoliticisation: The politics of research governance. Policy and Politics. View this article in WRRO
Pearce W, Hartley S & Nerlich B (2016) Transparency: issues are not that simple. Nature, 531(7592).
Pearce W, Raman S & Turner A (2015) Randomised trials in context: practical problems and social aspects of evidence-based medicine and policy. Trials, 16(1). View this article in WRRO
Pearce W & Hollin G (2015) Reply to 'Clarity of meaning in IPCC press conference'. Nature Climate Change, 5(11), 963-963.
Pearce W, Brown B, Nerlich B & Koteyko N (2015) Communicating climate change: conduits, content, and consensus. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 6(6), 613-626.
Hollin GJS & Pearce W (2015) Tension between scientific certainty and meaning complicates communication of IPCC reports. Nature Climate Change, 5(8), 753-756.
Pearce W & Raman S (2014) The new randomised controlled trials (RCT) movement in public policy: challenges of epistemic governance. Policy Sciences, 47(4), 387-402.
Wesselink A, Colebatch H & Pearce W (2014) Evidence and policy: discourses, meanings and practices. Policy Sciences, 47(4), 339-344.
Pearce W (2014) Scientific data and its limits: rethinking the use of evidence in local climate change policy. Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice, 10(2), 187-203. View this article in WRRO
Pearce W, Wesselink A & Colebatch H (2014) Evidence and meaning in policy making. Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice, 10(2), 161-165.
Falkenberg M, Galeazzi A, Torricelli M, Di Marco N, Larosa F, Sas M, Mekacher A, Pearce W, Zollo F, Quattrociocchi W & Baronchelli A () Growing polarization around climate change on social media. Nature Climate Change.
Greenhalgh T, Annandale E, Ashcroft R, Barlow J, Black N, Bleakley A, Boaden R, Braithwaite J, Britten N, Carnevale F , Checkland K et al () An open letter toThe BMJeditors on qualitative research. BMJ, i563-i563.
Pearce W, Holmberg K, Hellsten I & Nerlich B () Climate Change on Twitter: Topics, Communities and Conversations about the 2013 IPCC Working Group 1 Report. PLoS ONE, 9(4), e94785-e94785. View this article in WRRO

Chapters

(2022) The Role of Everyday Visuals in ‘Knowing Humans’ During COVID-19, Being Human During COVID-19 (pp. 28-35). Bristol University Press
Williams R (2022) “I’ve Got People’s Spit All over Me!” Reflections on the Future of Life-Saving Stem Cell Donor Recruitment In Martin P, Liddiard K, Pearce W & de Saille S (Ed.), Being Human During COVID-19 (pp. 100-107). Bristol: Bristol University Press.
Arthur KNA, Amanatidou E, de Saille S, Birabi T & Pandey P (2022) Where Will an Emerging Post-COVID-19 Future Position the Human? In Martin P, de Saille S, Liddiard K & Pearce W (Ed.), Being Human During COVID-19 (pp. 117-123). Bristol: Bristol University Press.
Martin P, Saille SD, Liddiard K & Pearce W (2022) Conclusion: Thinking about ‘the Human’ during COVID-19 Times (pp. 147-155). Bristol University Press
Martin P, Saille SD, Liddiard K & Pearce W (2022) Introduction (pp. 1-10). Bristol University Press
Ballo R & Pearce W (2022) Making Models into Public Objects (pp. 13-19). Bristol University Press
Vicari S & Yang Z (2022) Humans, COVID-19 and Platform Societies In Martin P, de Saille S, Liddiard K & Pearce W (Ed.), Being Human During COVID-19 (pp. 36-41). Bristol: Bristol University Press.
Helliwell R, Hartley S & Pearce W (2022) NGO Perspectives on the Social and Ethical Dimensions of Plant Genome-Editing, Rethinking Food System Transformation (pp. 129-141). Springer Nature Switzerland
Cook J & Pearce W (2019) Is emphasising consensus in climate science helpful for policymaking? In Hulme M (Ed.), Contemporary Climate Change Debates: A Student Primer (pp. 127-145). Abingdon: Routledge.
Pearce W & Nerlich B (2018) ‘An Inconvenient Truth’: A social representation of scientific expertise. In Nerlich B, Hartley S, Raman S & Smith A (Ed.), Science and the Politics of Openness: Here be Monsters (pp. 212-230). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Pearce W & Paterson F (2017) The Influence of Policy, Public Service, and Local Politics on the Shift to a Low-Carbon Economy in the East Midlands, The Low Carbon Economy (pp. 33-57). Springer International Publishing

Reports

Hartley S, Pearce W, McLeod C, Gibbs B, Connelly S, Couto J, Moreira T, Murphy J, Smith R, Staykova M & Walls J (2016) The TERRAIN tool for teaching responsible research and innovation View this article in WRRO

Posters

Borie M, Bruschi L, Chen A, Dell'Orto D, Hanchard M, Pearce W, Pilipets E, Quets A & Xu Z (2022) According to Google Images: Visual epistemologies of climate change and biodiversity loss. University of Amsterdam.

Theses / Dissertations

Pearce W The meanings of climate change policy: implementing carbon reduction in the East Midlands.

Datasets

Fisher E, Pearce W & Molfino E (2016) Politics of Science and Technology.

Preprints

Falkenberg M, Galeazzi A, Torricelli M, Di Marco N, Larosa F, Sas M, Mekacher A, Pearce W, Zollo F, Quattrociocchi W & Baronchelli A (2021) Growing polarisation around climate change on social media, arXiv.
Pearce W & Nerlich B (2016) ‘An Inconvenient Truth’: A social representation of scientific expertise., SocArXiv.
Ballo R, Pearce W, Stilgoe J & Wilsdon J () Socially-distanced science: how British publics were imagined, modelled and marginalised in political and expert responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Center for Open Science.

Teaching interests

Warren convenes Advancing with Digital Methods, a second year core module within the Digital Media and Society BA. The module introduces students to advanced tools, techniques and protocols for doing digital research; how to use them, how to evaluate them, and the context for their emergence and (sometimes rapid) decline. Warren shares his expertise and practical experience of using digital methods gained during the Making Climate Social project, building on training and collaboration with the world-leading Digital Methods Initiative.

He is also a co-investigator on TERRAIN, a cross-university, interdisciplinary team of teachers and researchers who create resources for teaching social science concepts to postgraduate and doctoral STEM students. He also contributes to other modules within Sociological Studies and the Department of Geography. In 2020, Warren was awarded the Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, recognition that his teaching attains the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and learning support in higher education.

Warren aims to engender a learning environment where students can discuss their ideas fearlessly, supported by the expertise he brings both from his own research and his classroom experience. Coupled to this, he communicates the importance of an experimental approach in digital methods, where mistakes are important parts of learning. This ties in with a key principle for transitioning from school to university learning: the ability to develop our own ways of thinking about the world, as opposed to memorising and recalling information with a focus on examinations.

Professional activities and memberships

Warren is a frequent peer reviewer for journals in the fields of STS, public policy, digital media, and in climate change research across multiple disciplines
Engaging Science. Technology and Society, Editorial Board member
Humanities & Social Science Communication, Editorial Board member
Climate Visuals, Advisory Board member
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Contributing Author AR6 WG1

PhD Students

Warren welcomes approaches from students who would like to study for a PhD that apply STS (science and technology studies) approaches to climate change, explore controversies over expert knowledge, critically study science communication, and/or employ digital visual methods. You can find general information about PhD studies in the department here.

Potential projects could include, but are not limited to:

Re-drawing the boundaries of truth: science in press conferences from cold fusion to coronavirus
Science advice to government: a feminist approach
Making and breaking consensus within science for policy
Image and imaginaries in online representations of climate change
Do common modelling standards exist between different scientific disciplines?

Current PhD students:

Yu-Ning Chuang: Construction of risk society: A corpus-based analysis of climate change, global warming, and air pollution in Taiwanese political talk shows

Jake Allcock: Understanding global sustainability communication on YouTube.