Steve Rayner

Steve Rayner is James Martin Professor of Science and Civilization at Oxford University and Director of the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, a member of the Oxford Martin School. He describes himself as an "undisciplined social scientist" having been trained in philosophy, comparative religion (BA University of Kent) and political anthropology (PhD University College London).

A key research interest is climate policy, in particular adaptation and geoengineering as ways to mitigate climate change’s effects. He has been an outspoken critic of the architecture of the , and his paper The Wrong Trousers: Radically Rethinking Climate Policy, co-written with Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics has been widely cited on this topic. He is also interested in wicked problems, uncomfortable knowledge and clumsy solutions. He is currently principal investigator of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities and co-director of the Oxford Geoengineering Programme. In 2008, he was listed by Wired Magazine as one of the 15 people the next President should listen to and was recognized for his contribution to the joint award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Influenced by his PhD supervisor and colleague anthropologist Mary Douglas, his underlying theoretical interest has always been in the use of ideas about nature to justify moral and political preferences. Having spent much of his research career outside of academia, he also professes a commitment to "changing the world through social science". His doctoral research applied and developed Douglas’s Cultural Theory studying the organizational dynamics of British far-left groups in the mid-20th century. He focused particularly on the tendency of Trotskyist sects and the Maoist Workers' Institute of Marxism–Leninism – Mao Zedong Thought group to factionalism and split as well as their propensity to entertain millenarian ideas of social change. Subsequent work has explored the role of organizational culture in the perception and management of environmental, technological and health risks as well as the political culture of climate change.

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