Geoff Dooley

My research examines climate governance through the lens of justice and power, analysing how institutional structures and political-economic constraints shape the possibilities for governance. Using Ireland's climate policy as a primary case study, I investigate why ambitious governance frameworks prove inadequate, and why some interests are prioritised when difficult trade-offs emerge.

I employ phronetic (practical wisdom) methodology, combining insights from institutional theory, environmental humanities, and critical policy analysis. My theoretical framework examines how institutional logics (the deep patterns that structure organisational fields) create path dependencies that constrain even well-intentioned actors.

A central concern is just transition: ensuring that climate and societal changes are navigated in ways that respect rather than compound inequality. As a practitioner-researcher, I bridge academic rigour and practical understanding, pursuing research that enables wiser, more just governance under profound constraints.

My work has long explored a deceptively simple question: how might systems work differently with constraint rather than against it? This inquiry draws on qualifications spanning environmental science, business, finance, executive coaching, and corporate governance, and traces back to my Nuffield Scholarship (2003), examining how agriculture might relate to a world facing environmental limits.

Between then and now, I worked in educational technology, environmental services and animal health before establishing Rootweavers, a consultancy focused on strategy and sustainability for organisations navigating complex governance challenges. Over time, this practice work deepened into sustained engagements: chairing Ireland's SDG National Stakeholder Forum, facilitating climate impacts and adaptation strategy for the Environmental Protection Agency, and delivering climate leadership workshops to senior civil servants through Public Affairs Ireland.

This embedded positioning, inside governance systems as a practitioner while maintaining analytical distance as a researcher, examining why ambitious institutional efforts prove inadequate when confronting the "hyperobject" of climate change.

Throughout, I have remained a working livestock farmer and forest owner, bringing grounded knowledge of agricultural contexts to my governance analysis.