Date: 4^th June, 2019

Time: 14:00-16:00 a.m.

Venue: Room 1213, The Qizhen Building, Zijingang Campus, Zhejiang University

【Speaker Introduction】：Dr Roger Tyersis a research fellow at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom,based in the department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology. His interests are in behavior change and public policy, particularly those behaviors and policies regarding the environment, energy, and transport.He taught at the University of Suwon in South Korea for two years, during which time he visited China several times. He thenreturned to the UK and completed his PhD in 2016 at the University of Southampton, on the topic of carbon emissions from air travel. Dr. Tyers worked as a researcher at ‘Ofgem’ – the UK government’s regulator of the energy industry – for two years before starting a research fellowship at Southampton University in 2018. He has published several articles on the topics of behavior change, energy, transport and student migration, and been featured in The Guardian, The Times, and The Independent. He is currently on a second fieldtrip to China to collect interview data about the environmental attitudes and behaviors of Chinese people who have studied in the UK, and since returned to China.

【Lecture Abstract】：Significant life-course changes can be ‘windows of opportunity’ to disrupt practices. Using qualitative focus group data, this talk examines whether the life-course change experienced by Chinese students migrating to the UK has an effect on environmentally impactful practices such as recycling and saving domestic energy. It does so by examining how such practices are understood and performed by Chinese and UK students living in their own countries, and comparing them with those of Chinese students in the UK. Using a social practice framework, these findings suggest that practices do change, and this change can be understood using a framework of competences (the ‘skill’ to be green), materials (the ‘stuff’ needed to be green), and meanings (the positive ‘image’ of being green). The findings show meanings – the cultural and social norms associated with pro-environmental behavior – to be particularly susceptible to the influence of ‘communities of practice’ where immigrants and natives mix on campus, with pro-environmental behavior change resulting from assimilation and mimesis (i.e. ‘copying the behavior’ of natives) rather than normative engagement.