Steven Vella
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology and Geography
B.A. (Hons.) Anthropology (University of Malta)
M.A. Visual Anthropology (University Of Manchester’s Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology)
Personal Details
Email: steven.vella@abdn.ac.uk
Associated with:
The Anthropology Department;
The Department of Geography and the Environment
Office (ACES): +44 (0) 1224-274182
Research Interests
Conflict resolution and mediation in stakeholder participation on environmental and social issues in local urban planning
The roles of stakeholders in Urban and environmental planning
Social Impact Assessments
Landscape Change, Identity, issues of gentrification and urban regeneration
The Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency & Recycling
The roles of different types of knowledges in planning processes
Current Research
The roles of Social Impact Assessments and social actors in stakeholder involvement on urban development projects in an EU country such as Malta
Urban projects in areas of social and cultural heritage sensitivity bring with them a lot of contestations and conflicting interests. These pressures end up putting stakeholder and environmental needs very low on the agendas of Environmental and Social Impact Assessments. These same pressures make public and stakeholder participation and involvement limited and many times pro-forma. This makes knowledge transfer from grassroots level into planning and development process and vice-versa very difficult to achieve.
The doctoral research will investigate the linkages between different practices and
approaches to knowledge formation, contextualization and transfer, and the affects on stakeholder participation and involvement within environmental planning decision-making processes. Themes of power, governance, governmentality, expert knowledge production by “hard” and “soft” scientists, local expertise and issues of 
“planning knowledge”, “local knowledge,” identity and representation will be explored. These themes delineate the decisions that are taken both as on-the-ground practices at grassroots level and local knowledge within the environmental socio-political policy framework as end results or outcomes of these processes.
Supervisors: Dr Jo Vergunst (UoA), Dr Antonio A. Ioris (UOA), Dr Sergei Shubin (Swansea University).
Internal consulting expert on stakeholder participation for PhD project: Dr Mark Reed (UoA)
Research Grants
ACES
STEPS, (Maltese Government / European Social Fund)
Wenner-Gren young scholars/students grant for EASA 2008 paper-givers
Publications
2010, Vella & Borg; ‘integrate Plurality of Landscapes and Public involvements into Maltese environmental Policy’ in S. Keorner and I. Russel (eds.) Unquiet Pasts – Lived Cultural Heritage, Risk Society and Reflexivity (New York: Springer-Kluwer.)
