Conference Keynotes

MP Rachel Maclean

Rachel Maclean MP

Opening Plenary
Ministerial Address
Mon, 13 Sept 10:00 – 11:00

Rachel Maclean was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport on 14 February 2020. She was elected Conservative MP for Redditch in 2017.

As Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Rachel has responsibility for:
– future of transport (including future of freight)
– environment (including transport decarbonisation)
– transition period activity and future relations with the EU
– international, exports and inward investment
– space
– secondary legislation

Professor Greg Marsden

Professor Greg Marsden

Opening Plenary
Decarbonising Places
Mon, 13 Sept 10:00 – 11:00

Greg Marsden is Professor of Transport Governance at the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds. He has researched issues surrounding the design and implementation of new policies for over 20 years covering a range of issues. He is an expert in climate and energy policy in the transport sector and is the Transport Decarbonisation Champion for EPSRC. He is the Principal Investigator on the DecarboN8 network where he is responsible for integrating a new place based approach to decarbonising transport. Greg co-chairs the Commission on Travel Demand which has published influential studies on travel demand and shared mobility. He is the Secretary General of the World Conference on Transport Research Society and the Chair of the Special Interest Group on Governance. He has served as an advisor to the House of Commons Transport Select Committee and regularly advises local, national and international governments.  

Paola Jiron Martinez

Paola Jiron Martinez

Situating Knowledges and Travelling Know-how in Place-Based Decarbonisation
Mon, 13 Sept 16:00 – 17:30

Paola Jirón (PhD Urban and Regional Planning (LSE-UK).
Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU), Universidad de Chile. Coordinator of PhD programme on Territory, Space and Society (D_TES) and Director of MOVYT (Millennium Nucleus on Mobilities and Territories). Main areas of research: urban studies from an everyday dwelling experience.

Professor Rebecca Willis

Professor Rebecca Willis

Plenary: Governing the Decarbonisation of Transport 
Tues, 14 Sept 10:00 – 11:00

Rebecca Willis is a researcher with twenty years’ experience in environment and sustainability policy and practice, at international, national and local level. She is a Professor in Practice at Lancaster Environment Centre, and an Expert Lead for Climate Assembly UK, the national Citizens’ Assembly commissioned by Parliament. In 2009 Rebecca founded Green Alliance’s Climate Leadership Programme, an initiative to support Members of the UK Parliament, and still supports Green Alliance’s work in this area. Previously, she was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the UKRI Energy Programme, Council Member of the Natural Environment Research Council, vice-chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, and Director of Green Alliance

coming soon

Keynote TBC

Plenary: Technologies and Places
Wed, 15 Sept 10:00 – 11:00

Watch this space! More details coming soon…

Group Captain Blythe Crawford

Group Captain Blythe Crawford

Sustained Flight! Piloting the RAF to CNZ and beyond
Thurs, 16 Sept 10:00 – 11:00


Group Captain Blythe Crawford took command at RAF Leeming in November 2018 following a tour as the RAF exchange officer within the Chief of Staff of the US Air Force’s Strategic Studies Group in Washington, where he was part of the team developing the USAF Innovation Strategy.

Blythe served two previous tours at RAF Leeming on the Tornado F3 and has served two tours in the Pentagon in Washington DC as well as in NATO and on multiple tours overseas on Operations. He has recently established an Innovation Hub at Leeming, RAF eXperimental (RAFX), where they are leading the charge to get the MOD to Carbon Net Zero by 2040. He is particularly focused on collaborative working, especially with academia and start-ups, seeing this as an essential ingredient of the national innovation strategy and prosperity agenda.

Dr Mimi Sheller

Dr Mimi Sheller

Closing Plenary
Fri, 17 Sept 17:00 – 19:30

Mimi Sheller, Ph.D., is Inaugural Dean of The Global School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Massachusetts. Until July 2021 she was Professor of Sociology, Head of the Sociology Department, and founding Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She is founding co-editor of the journal Mobilities and past President of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility. She helped to establish the “new mobilities paradigm” and is considered to be a key theorist in critical mobilities research and in Caribbean studies.

Sheller has published more than 125 articles and book chapters, and is the author or co-editor of fifteen books, including Advanced Introduction to Mobilities (Edward Elgar, 2021); Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene (Duke University Press, 2020); Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes (Verso, 2018); Aluminum Dreams: The Making of Light Modernity (MIT Press, 2014); Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom (Duke University Press, 2012); Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies (Routledge, 2003); and Democracy After Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica (Macmillan Caribbean, 2000).

Conference cover photo

The DecarboN8 Conference brings together researchers, practitioners and activists from around the world to look at what works where (and why) for decarbonising transport, and what will need to be done to deliver the transition at the pace required.

Register now to join us (online!) for 5 days of keynotes, panels, workshops, networking and exhibitions.