AA (Angeliki) Balayannis

I am a transdisciplinary social scientist working on planetary health. I specialise in the problems of pollution and waste, often with a focus on chemicals and hazardous materials. This work interrogates and intervenes in how pollution and waste are understood, managed, and governed in everyday practice. I am developing a critical transdisciplinary praxis that works across the social, physical, and natural sciences, as well as the arts and humanities. This work assembles publics within and beyond the academy; I have co-produced research with a range of publics, including government agencies, industry associations, trade unions, NGOs, activists, and artists.

The pursuit of epistemic justice underpins my research and teaching. My work is theoretically and ethically located at the intersections of feminist science and technology studies, and human geography. This enables me to co-produce interventions which move beyond critique and ‘damage-based’ methodologies, to center the knowledge of marginalised publics most heavily affected by planetary health issues.

My research is published with and for a range of publics. For example, theoretically-driven work is published in social science-led journals such as Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, and Catalyst: Feminism Theory Technoscience; Collaborative transdisciplinary research – working with ecologists, engineers, epidemiologists, and practitioners – has been published in leading health journals such as The Lancet Planetary Health; and I have co-produced policy reports with research partners, such as guidance for the UK waste sector during the COVID-19 outbreak, published by the Chartered Institute of Wastes Management.

This capacity to work across and beyond academic disciplines is shaped by my somewhat unconventional career path. My education spans across the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. My path commenced in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia, in the performing arts, where I worked in arts production and management. I then transitioned back into higher education to follow my interests in environmental justice, and subsequently re-trained as a geographer. After receiving a Bachelor of Environments (2014) and PhD in Human Geography from the University of Melbourne (2018), I moved to the UK to undertake an interdisciplinary Rutherford Fellowship in the Institute of Environment, Health and Societies at Brunel University London. In 2019 I joined the Department of Geography at the University of Exeter as a Lecturer, and after 5 years in the UK, I moved to the Netherlands. In the Autumn of 2023 I joined Wageningen University & Research as an Associate Professor in the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation Group.