Rate My Professor Tavis Potts

Professor Tavis Potts holds a Personal Chair in Sustainable Development and Environmental Governance in the School of Geosciences at the University of Aberdeen. He serves as Dean for Environmental Sustainability and coordinator of the Just Transition Lab, while spearheading the Centre for Energy Transition. Joining the University in 2014 as a senior lecturer in Environmental Geography, he previously worked at the Scottish Association for Marine Science from 2006 to 2014, researching sustainability, environmental resources, and marine renewables' impacts on coastal communities. His research examines the relationships between people, place, and planet, evaluating social, environmental, and energy justice. Key focuses include critically assessing Just Transitions within Net Zero strategies to deepen societal engagement in energy transition, applying participatory approaches to natural capital and ecosystem services, developing survey-based methods for social values on the environment, and analyzing the blue economy's emergence and effectiveness from international to local scales. Additional interests encompass marine resource governance, planning, participatory and community-based natural capital management, and the political economy of environmental policy and decision-making.

Potts has secured significant funding, including £250,000 from Interreg EU for SEATRACES (2019-2021), £200,000 from EU FP7 IDREEM as work package leader on social and policy analysis (2012-2014), £150,000 personal from EU FP7 KNOWSEAS (part of €9 million project, 2009-2013), and £110,000 from NERC for CORPORATES (2014-2016). Notable publications include "A place-based approach to measuring a just transition: Evidence from the north-east of Scotland" (2025, Energy Research & Social Science), "Development of an interdisciplinary conceptual framework to understand marine energy transitions in North Sea coastal communities" (2026, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition), "Who cares? European attitudes towards marine and coastal environments" (2016), "Do marine protected areas deliver flows of ecosystem services to support human welfare?" and "The natural advantage of regions: linking sustainability, innovation, and regional development in Australia" (2010). He influences policy via the University Sustainability Committee, Aberdeen City Council Net Zero Delivery Unit, Aberdeenshire Council Climate Ready Aberdeenshire Board, ESRC Peer Review College, and UK Marine Science Coordination Committee.