Staff Profile

I lecture in Sociology at Newcastle where I am privileged to be a small part of a brilliant, hard-working and collegiate subject group.

I've spent a good part of my career trying to think at the intersection of ecological politics, fictional imaginaries and social theory. I work with speculative fiction to elucidate eco-social dilemmas and possibilities; think from sociology to situate and enrich environmental and climate imaginaries; and use more-than-human and post-human approaches to interrogate and extend sociology. These themes have taken on increasing urgency and weight in the light of the climate crisis.

I research and teach on social theory, utopian studies, environmental/Anthropocene futures, science fiction and social imaginaries. I'm also interested in epistemic cultures and gender and in empirical approaches to reading fiction.

How can we live better with nature? What would a good environmental future look and feel like? My research explores social thinking about green futures in fiction, policy, public debate and the sociological imagination and how it is changing in response to climate change and the Anthropocene. 

My book Green Utopias: Environmental Hope Before and After Nature (Polity 2017) explores some of these debates, along with recent articles and chapters (with Iossifidis Reimagining climate futures: Reading Annihilation. Geoforum 2022;  Green Utopia: Facing the Climate Crisis, Inhabiting the Anthropocene in Greentopia: Utopian Thought in the Anthropocene Springer, 2024).

I have been working on science fiction, readers and science futures since leading the Newcastle part of the AHRC funded project Unsettling Scientific Stories (2016-18). Ongoing work with Dr Amy Chambers and Dr Miranda Iossifidis examines the relevance of speculative narratives for understanding science and environmental challenges and its value for people as we try to come to terms with climate change and the Anthropocene. With Prof Joanna Verran we have written a book about science, fiction and reading publics due for publication with Palgrave in 2025.

My work on utopianism and utopian modes of theorising explores relationships between utopia, society and desire (No Intentions? Utopian Theory After the Future in the Journal for Cultural Research 2009); utopia, realism and futurity (Utopia: Futurity, realism and the social in the Routledge Handbook of Social Futures); and utopia, failure and weakness (Climate and failure: for a weak utopianism, in preparation for a special issue of the European Journal of Social Theory).

I am interested in supervising PhD projects in the broad areas of environmental and climate futures; Anthropocene social theorising; utopian studies; sociology, speculation and alternative futures; science fiction and sociology; fiction reading and public engagement with the climate crisis. 

2025/6 Semester 1 I will be Module Leader for SOC2058 Theorising Social Worlds, our revised and fully refreshed introduction to social theory at Stage 2. We'll be unpacking and exploring key concepts and theories using a thematic approach with contemporary examples, drawing on the research insights of a range of sociology staff at Newcastle.

2025/6 Semester 2 I am excited to be involved in bringing a brand new Stage 2 module to Newcastle Sociology: SOC2029 Climate and Society. Co-devised with Miranda Iossifidis and Audrey Verma, the module will explore how the climate crisis is social through and through, and show how sociology can bring insight, critical thinking, and hope to the urgencies of this climate moment.

• Articles

  • Liebhaber N, Garforth L, Frick M, Keller L. Utopia and Climate Change Education: Modes of Utopian Knowledge in Times of Climate Crisis. Pedagogy, Culture and Society 2024. In Press.
  • Garforth L, Ramirez-Blanco J. Conversation with Lisa Garforth / Conversatorio con Lisa Garforth. Re-visiones 2023, 2023(13).
  • Iossifidis M, Garforth L. Reimagining climate futures: Reading Annihilation. Geoforum 2022, 137, 248-257.
  • Garforth L. Environmental Futures, Now and Then: Crisis, Systems Modeling, and Speculative Fiction. Osiris 2019, 34(1), 238-257.
  • Garforth L, Gallinat A. Introduction: Constructing and practising student engagement in changing institutional cultures. Learning and Teaching 2018, 11(1), 1-18.
  • Kerr A, Garforth L. Affective Practices, Care and Bioscience: a Study of Two Laboratories. The Sociological Review 2016, 64(1), 3-20.
  • Garforth L. In/Visibilities of Research: Seeing and Knowing in STS. Science, Technology and Human Values 2012, 37(2), 264-285.
  • Garforth L, Kerr A. Interdisciplinarity and the Social Science: Capital, Institutions and Autonomy. British Journal of Sociology 2011, 62(4), 657-676.
  • Garforth L, Kerr A. Let's Get Organised: Practicing and Valuing Scientific Work Inside and Outside the Laboratory. Sociological Research Online 2010, 15(2), 11.
  • Garforth L, Kerr A. Women and Science: What's the Problem?. Social Politics 2009, 16(3), 379-403.
  • Garforth L. No Intentions? Utopian Theory After the Future. Journal for Cultural Research 2009, 13(1), 5-27.
  • Garforth L, Kraftl P. Introduction: Utopia and the “Problem” of Intention. Journal for Cultural Research 2009, 13(1), 1-4.
  • Garforth L. Ideal Nature: Utopias of Landscape and Loss. Spaces of Utopia, An Electronic Journal 2006, (3), 5-26.
  • Garforth L. Green utopias: beyond apocalypse, progress, and pastoral. Utopian Studies 2005, 16(1), 1-37.

• Authored Book

  • Garforth L. Green Utopias: Environmental Hope Before and After Nature. Oxford, UK: Polity, 2017.

• Book Chapters

  • Garforth L. Green Utopia: Facing the Climate Crisis, Inhabiting the Anthropocene. In: Angela Kalhoff; Eva Liedauer, ed. Greentopia: Utopian Thought in the Anthropocene. Cham: Springer, 2024, pp.17-33.
  • Garforth L. From El Modena to Terminator: Imagining Green Utopian Places for the Anthropocene. In: Tabernero C, ed. Urban Narratives about Nature : Socio-Ecological Imaginaries between Science and Entertainment. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2024, pp.175-194.
  • Garforth L. Utopia: Futurity, realism and the social. In: López Galviz, C and Spiers, E, ed. Routledge Handbook of Social Futures. London: Routledge, 2021, pp.292-303.
  • Garforth L, Chambers AC. Reading Science: SF and the Uses of Literature. In: Neel Ahuja, Monique Allewaert, Lindsey Andrews, Gerry Canavan, Rebecca Evans, Nihad M. Farooq, Erica Fretwell, Nicholas Gaskill, Patrick Jagoda, Erin Gentry Lamb, Jennifer Rhee, Britt Rusert, Matthew A. Taylor, Aarthi Vadde, Priscilla Wald, Rebecca Walsh, ed. The Palgrave Handbook of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature and Science. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
  • Coulson S, Garforth L, Payne G, Wastell E. Admissions, adaptations and anxieties: social class inside and outside the elite university. In: Waller, R; Ingram, N; Ward, MRN, ed. Higher Education and Social Inequalities University Admissions, Experiences, and Outcomes. London, UK: Routledge, 2018.
  • Garforth L. Latour, Bruno (1947–). In: James D. Wright, ed. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier, 2015, pp.414-419.
  • Garforth L. Lost Edens and Other Green Worlds: Ecotopia, Politics, and Aesthetics. In: Heffernan, N., Wragg, D, ed. Culture, Environment and Ecopolitics. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011, pp.55-83.
  • Garforth L, Cervinkova A. Times and Trajectories in Academic Knowledge Production. In: Felt, U, ed. Knowing and Living in Academic Research: Convergence and Heterogeneity in Research Cultures in the European Context. Prague: Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2009, pp.169-226.
  • Garforth L. Ecotopian Fiction and the Sustainable Society. In: Parham, J, ed. The Environmental Tradition in English Literature. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, pp.100-116.

• Online Publication

  • Garforth L, Iossifidis M. Weirding Utopia for the Anthropocene: Hope, Un/Home and the Uncanny in Annihilation and The City We Became. Central European University, 2021. Available at: https://475d6123-97bf-469e-95a0-3db117b8e08f.filesusr.com/ugd/b096b2_90396f28f0b14789a0b41bab78a26a28.pdf.