Dr Peter Gardner
Senior Lecturer

Profile

Biography

Pete Gardner is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology. He is a political sociologist whose research focuses primarily on the sociology of climate and ecological breakdown, the transnational spread of environmental protest, and the criminalisation and political repression of climate activists. He grew up in view of the Mountains of Mourne in the north of Ireland, and holds a BA (Economic and Social Studies) and MPhil (Race, Ethnicity, Conflict) from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD (Sociology) from the University of Cambridge.

Key roles:

• Director of Postgraduate Research, Department of Sociology
• Module convenor for 'Societies and the Climate Crisis'
• Deputy Chief Editor of Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest.

Research

Overview

Gardner's research focuses on the sociology of climate and ecological breakdown, the transnational spread of environmental protest, and the criminalisation and political repression of climate activists.

Criminalising Climate Activism

Since 2023, Gardner has been examining the impact of criminalisation and state repression of climate activism and activists in the UK. 

Spreading Rebellion: The transnational spread of Extinction Rebellion

Since 2020, he has been working with Tiago Carvalho to study the transnational spread of Extinction Rebellion. Key publications from this study include:

• Carvalho T and Gardner P (2025) Extinction Rebellion: The Emergence, Evolution and Character of a Transnational Environmental Movement, in Almeida P (Ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Climate Action, University of Oxford Press.
• Gardner P, Williams S and Macdonald A (2024) Glued on for the grandkids: The gendered politics of care in the global environmental movement, Sociology Compass 18(1): 1-14.
• Gardner P, O’Brien T, Carvalho T & Adekola O (2024) PROFILE: Extinction Rebellion in The Gambia, Social Movement Studies 23(1): 122-128.
• Gardner P, O’Brien T, Carvalho T & Adekola O (2023) Confronting the Climate Crisis in Africa: The Just Transition Movement and Extinction Rebellion in Nigeria and South Africa, Review of African Political Economy 50(177-178): 475-490.
• Gardner P and Carvalho T (2023) Intersecting Planes of Crisis: Geometrics of crises and the climate catastrophe in Extinction Rebellion Rhetoric, in Heidemann K (Eds.) Combating crises from below, Maastricht: Maastricht University Press.
• Gardner P, Carvalho T and Valenstain M (2022) Spreading Rebellion?: The rise of Extinction Rebellion Chapters across the world, Environmental Sociology 8(4): 424-435.

Symbolic Objects in Contentious Politics

In collaboration with Benjamin Abrams (UCL), Gardner researches the role of symbolic objects in contentious politics. Key work for this project include:

• Abrams B and Gardner P (Eds.) (2023) Symbolic Objects in Contentious Politics, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Gardner P and Abrams B (2023) Resistance With and Against Symbolic Objects: Material targets of resistance and symbolic recruitment in the American Revolution, the anti-Apartheid movement, and Just Stop Oil protests, Journal of Resistance Studies 9(2): 78-112.

Climate and ecological breakdown in conflict-affected societies

Since 2023, Gardner has worked with scholars at Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan and Bacha Khan University Charsadda in Northeastern Pakistan to study climate resilience in conflict-affected societies. Thus far, our collaborative work has been published in the journal Peace & Change.

Ethnopolitics in Northern Ireland

In his previous work, Gardner analysed the politics of ethnicity and language in postconflict societies, focusing especially on the Ulster-Scots movement in Northern Ireland. This research was published in Identities, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Irish Journal of Sociology, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. His book, Ethnic Dignity and the Ulster-Scots Movement in Northern Ireland: Supremacy in Peril was published by Palgrave in 2020.

Current PhD Candidates

• Haddy Njie (The role of courage in social movements)
• Fajer Almulaifi (Climate commissions, citizens' assemblies and civil society in Leeds, Belfast, and Edinburgh)
• Abdulmohsen Alenezi (National and tribal identities in Kuwait)
• Jennifer Brunner (The return of colonially looted museum objects)
• Stephanie Richards (British Caribbean women's experiences of empowerment and oppression)

Completed PhDs

• Adam Dinsmore (Perspectives on the "elite" in British grassroots party politics)
• Catherine Stinton (Gender and race in the British Far Right movement)

Publications

Selected publications

Gardner P, Williams S and Macdonald A (2024) Glued on for the grandkids: The gendered politics of care in the global environmental movement, Sociology Compass 18(1): 1-14.

Gardner P, O’Brien T, Carvalho T & Adekola O (2023) Confronting the Climate Crisis in Africa: The Just Transition Movement and Extinction Rebellion in Nigeria and South Africa, Review of African Political Economy 50(177-178): 475-490.

Abrams B and Gardner P (Eds.) (2023) Symbolic Objects in Contentious Politics, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Gardner P and Abrams B (2023) Resistance With and Against Symbolic Objects: Material targets of resistance and symbolic recruitment in the American Revolution, the anti-Apartheid movement, and Just Stop Oil protests, Journal of Resistance Studies 9(2): 78-112.

Gardner P, Carvalho T and Valenstain M (2022) Spreading Rebellion?: The rise of Extinction Rebellion Chapters across the world, Environmental Sociology 8(4): 424-435.

Gardner P (2020) Ethnic Dignity and the Ulster-Scots Movement in Northern Ireland: Supremacy in Peril, Palgrave Macmillan.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Becoming a social researcher (1st Year UG)
• Cultivating a Sociological Imagination (1st Year UG)
• Inequality, Intersectionality and Resistance (2nd Year UG)
• Understanding Contemporary Crime (2nd Year UG)
• People and the State (2nd Year UG)
• Societies and the Climate Crisis (2nd Year UG)

Postgraduate

• Crime Debates and Controversies (MA)

PhD applicants

PhD applicants are particularly sought for the following:

• Environmental social movements
• Topics related to the sociology of climate and ecological breakdown
• Contentious politics more broadly (protest, social movements, revolt, revolution)
• Anti-racist and decolonising approaches to any of the topics outlined above