Dr Shona Koren Paterson
Director of Global Lives Research Centre / Senior Lecturer

Research area(s)

Shona seeks to engage with a range of emerging global challenges through collaboration and co-production of knowledge by employing a transdisciplinary and applied bridging of science, social science, the arts and humanities at local, national, and international scales. Co-production enables science and research to have greater impact on sustainable development outcomes. Shona works to facilitate iterative and collaborative processes involving diverse types of expertise, knowledge and actors to produce context-specific knowledge and pathways towards a sustainable future.

There is a real and urgent need to understand and tackle intractable global challenges in the face of constantly shifting biophysical and social realities. Shona’s work, with a range of partners across the globe, embraces this need, recognising that sustainability and equitable development, as illustrated by the UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), requires transformative social and economic pathways co-created with intended beneficiary communities. The overall achievement of the SDGs depends not only upon responsible economic development administered through the lens of environmental sustainability, but perhaps more significantly, through enhanced social inclusion and resilience building at all scales.

At Brunel, Shona is the Director of the Centre for Global Lives, the co-lead of the Equitable Development and Resilience Research Group as well as a member of the Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience. Examples of on-going research projects include the ESKE project and Catching a Wave. Most recently she has been involved in the co-curation of an unwavering immersive virtual installation on Long COVID in partnership with artists and scientitsts through the New York Gallery/Forum Relational Space. 

Grants