Sustainable Consumption and Digital Media PhD Scholarship

This PhD scholarship is part of a collaborative project titled 'A "virtual market" for analysing the uptake of energy efficiency measures in residential and commercial sectors', funded by the Collaborative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living. The project uses agent based modelling (ABM) to represent consumer behaviour, social networks and their responses to non-financial incentives and barriers in order to better understand, plan and assess different types of market interventions to achieve energy efficiency. The PhD project will specifically analyse the role and mechanisms of social communication, learning and social networks in fostering sustainable and energy efficient household practices, exploring this in relation to digital media technologies and internet infrastructure, and the emergent types of knowledge and goods exchange, social interaction and lifestyles it brings about. The PhD candidate will be based at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research and will work within an interdisciplinary team of researchers with expertise in media and communications, sociology and anthropology in conjunction with CSIRO.