Peter Mark Eckersley

I am interested in comparative public policy, environmental politics, governance and public management. In particular, I concentrate on the ways in which central governments seek to deliver their policies at the local level, and how public bodies interact with private and voluntary actors to try and achieve policy objectives. The role of new public management reforms such as privatisation, outsourcing and performance management plays a key role in this process. I concentrate on 'wicked' policy sectors (especially climate change and austerity) and seek to analyse decision-making processes in order to identify which actors are shaping policy outcomes. By extension, this helps to examine the nature of democratic accountability.

My PhD, which I passed in January 2016, compared climate change policy-making arrangements in English and German cities. 

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Environment Department, working on a project that analyses the impact of austerity on EU environmental policy.

Between 2015 and 2016 I worked as a Research Associate at Newcastle University Business School, where I produced research articles and teaching content on issues of sustainability, ethical business and corporate social responsibility. I have also worked as a visiting researcher at the universities of Potsdam and Muenster in Germany.

Between 2010 and 2015 I was a PhD student and Teaching Assistant in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University. My doctoral thesis was in Political Science and it compared the policy-making processes of an English and a German municipality (Newcastle upon Tyne and Gelsenkirchen respectively) in the area of climate change. In particular, it focused on the extent to which each council works with other actors in order to increase its capacity to achieve policy objectives.

Between 2001 and 2012 I worked for the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA, the UK's accountancy body for the public services) in various consultancy, training and research posts. This involved advising public sector practitioners, most of whom worked in local authorities, on management, strategy, finance and policy development.