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Biography
Emma Etim is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work explores urban and environmental change, waste management, and social and political geographies. He is currently completing a PhD in Geography at the University of Nottingham.
Emma has teaching experience in research methods, systematic and scoping reviews, governance, and environmental issues. His research has been published in leading journals such as Waste Management, Heliyon, Waste Management & Research, Social Sciences & Humanities Open, and African Studies.
Beyond his own publications, Emma contributes to the advancement of knowledge by reviewing manuscripts for top-ranked journals, including Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Journal of Environmental Management, Resources, Conservation & Recycling Advances, Waste Management, and Policing Practice and Research.
He has led research and sustainability projects, secured external funding, and contributed actively to curriculum design, mentoring, and outreach. His scholarship bridges disciplines and regions, with a strong focus on how culture, policy, and behaviour intersect in shaping environmental futures.
Research Summary
The legacies of colonial rule ingrained cultural practices and evolving policy instruments have collectively shaped how societies manage waste. For instance, across much of the Global South, the… read more
Recent Publications
Current Research
The legacies of colonial rule ingrained cultural practices and evolving policy instruments have collectively shaped how societies manage waste. For instance, across much of the Global South, the trajectory from early European contact in the fifteenth century to formal British colonial rule (c. 1861-1960 in the case of Nigeria) reconfigured the indigenous practices of reuse, repair, sharing, and ritual management of organic waste. Colonial infrastructure and administrative logic displaced or marginalised local systems, while post-colonial urbanisation and globalisation introduced new material flows that strained emergent institutions. These legacies persist in household routines and community norms today, even as formal policies seek to professionalise services, raise recycling rates, and reduce landfill dependence.
This thesis seeks to makes four major contributions to the literature. First, it seeks to synthesise evidence on how colonial legacies and traditional practices continue to shape household discard behaviour, including often-unseen, gendered labour and religious/cultural lenses. Second, it will assess the interaction between regulatory instruments and sociocultural determinants, explaining why identical tools yield divergent outcomes across locations. Third, it will investigate the translation of 'waste literacy', a crucial concept that denotes understanding and action on waste management, into durable practice, addressing the persistent awareness-to-action gap-the disjuncture between knowing and doing. Finally, it will foreground community and entrepreneurial mechanisms that bridge households and formal systems, identifying how social enterprise models and municipal-private partnerships can stabilise circular behaviours.