Paris Hadfield

My research investigates urban governance and financing pathways for just transitions to sustainability, including through municipal climate strategies, renewable energy procurement, lending, and co-ownership, waste management systems, and community-centred business models for home energy upgrades. Across these areas, I explore the role of subnational actors and intermediaries, institutional logics, and their geographies in shaping transformative outcomes for people and environments.

My research has advanced scholarship on the role of finance in sustainability transitions by mapping the structuring effects of contemporary capitalist finance in urban built environments and setting an agenda for transformative financial innovation.

In examining what the imperatives of transformative change mean for sustainability research practice, I have contributed to understanding how inter- and transdisciplinary living lab research is governed and implemented in universities and peri-urban development settings.

Through partnerships with various stakeholders outside of the university, my research has had real-world impact; for example, by identifying city research and innovation priorities and multilevel climate action strategies with the Global Covernant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM); testing and learning from circular village waste management interventions developed in collaboration with government, NGO, industry, and community stakeholders through the Citarum Action Research Program (CARP) in Indonesia; and developing tools and resources for program organisers to scale community-led home energy upgrades across Australia with the RACE for 2030 CRC.

I have previously held teaching and research roles in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning and the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne.