Louise Reardon

Biography

Louise is a lecturer at the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV). Her research is principally concerned with transport governance and the politics and policy of wellbeing.

Research Interest

Louise has been at the forefront of research into the politics and policy of wellbeing; uncovering how wellbeing has come on to international and domestic political agendas and its potential to be paradigm changing for public policy, moving us 'Beyond GDP'. Louise has worked to promote a wellbeing-led approach to policy within the transport sector in particular; working with stakeholders including the Department for Transport, and West Yorkshire Combined Authority to better understand the links between transport and wellbeing, and the barriers and opportunities to embedding wellbeing in policy practice. Louise is also very interested in the governance challenges the transport sector faces in light of a plethora of disruptive innovations affecting the sector (such as electric vehicles, automation and the 'shared economy') and the implications of these innovations for economic, social and environmental wellbeing. To this end Louise has worked with the DEMAND Centre to analyse the ways in which the issue of energy demand is problematized within the transport sector, and how government policy can be said to 'steer' energy demand, seeking to encourage whole system rather than siloed thinking on this issue. Theoretically, Louise's research has focused on advancing understanding of agenda setting and policy-change processes in the context of multi-level governance, and to this end has contributed to advancing the applicability of Kingdon's Multiple-Streams Approach to agenda-setting within the modern-day policy context.