Sara Giorgi

Sara joined Brook Lyndhurst in June 2006 from Friends of the Earth and became a senior researcher in 2007, and an Associate Director in 2012. Sara is particularly interested in behaviour change theory and how it translates into practice. She has worked on a plethora of projects that have explored pro-environmental behaviour change at the level of individuals, community groups and social networks. She is an experienced project manager with particular expertise in the following areas:

Quantitative analysis
Sara is well-versed in large data set analysis. She has carried out detailed SPSS analysis on a number of large data sets, including a large scale survey of almost 4,500 households and a packaging review of more than 10,000 individual products.

Interview and discussion group facilitation
Sara is a skilled interviewer and discussion group moderator. She is comfortable with a range of interviewing techniques, which she has used across a variety of sectors and audiences, including local authority officers, school children, high-level policy stakeholders, corporate executives and community groups.

Literature reviews
Sara has led on several of our desk reviews of academic and grey literature, including our climate change scenario work for the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and an award-winning synthesis review on waste prevention for Defra in 2008/9. This required the assembly and analysis of a database of around 800 sources, including strategic overviews, policy briefings, programme and campaign evaluations, formal modelling studies and research projects.

Waste and resources
Sara has been involved in a number of multi-partner studies exploring different aspects of waste. These have included a project investigating public participation in food waste collections, a major synthesis review on household waste prevention behaviours and a study establishing the behaviour change evidence base to inform community-based waste prevention and recycling, all for Defra.

Sustainable clothing
Sara has built up a considerable breadth of knowledge around sustainable clothing and has contributed to a number of projects on the subject. These have included our qualitative study on public understanding of product lifetimes and durability for Defra and project management of a study exploring the potential to encourage sustainable textile use by using schools as social networks . She also led our contribution to a pilot study on how to procure sustainable clothing for the National Health Service.

Sara has a Masters degree in Environmental Policy, Planning and Regulation from the London School of Economics and an undergraduate degree in European Social and Political Studies from University College of London for which she was awarded a distinction. She is also a member of the Social Research Association and Market Research Society.

Outside of her project work, Sara is responsible for Brook Lyndhurst’s own carbon monitoring and sustainability reporting. She also sits on London Sustainability Exchange’s Environmental Justice Pan-London Policy and Practice Group.

Prior to joining Brook Lyndhurst Sara undertook research and campaign work for the Italian Ministry of Agricultural and Forestry Policies and Friends of the Earth. In addition to her interest for sustainability issues, Sara has a passion for languages and speaks Italian, French and Spanish. She also thoroughly enjoys Latin and jazz dancing as well as swimming.