
Professor Chris Preist
BSc, MSc
Expertise
I research the environmental sustainability impacts of digital technology - assessing the energy and resources used by such technology, but also understanding how these technologies impact our behaviours and society more widely.
Current positions
University Academic Director of Sustainability
Bristol Institute for Learning and TeachingProfessor of Sustainability & Computer Systems
School of Computer Science
Contact
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Research interests
The main focus of my research currently is on the following:
- Environmental impact of digital technology, and more broadly consumer electronic goods. Particularly the understanding of user behaviour and how this affects such impacts. The role of interface design on influencing user behaviour with regard to environmental impacts.
- Life Cycle Assessment techniques applied to end-to-end digital products and services. Representation of uncertainty within such analyses, particularly with regard to user choices and behaviour in the system.
- The integration of life cycle analysis and carbon footprinting techniques into broader systemic models of sustainability impact.
- Agent-based simulation of socio-economic systems, particularly those with environmental implications, (For example, tragedy-of-the-commons problems) and exploration of the impact of alternative social and economic interventions in such systems.
- The role of computer technology within the wider socio-technical systems emerging to address climate change and other sustainability issues.
- The interplay between technology innovation, business models and sustainability impacts, particularly in the digital media sector.
My secondary interests are:
- Education for Sustainable Development pedagogies and practices in Higher Education.
- The application of digital technology (particularly social computing and mobile technology) to engage communities around environmental and social sustainability.
- The role of gamification techniques and social norm theories in such engagement (and, more broadly, in crowdsourcing and citizen science), and the analysis of the interaction between competitive and contributional motivations of participants.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Net Zero Digital Infrastructure Sandpit
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of Computer ScienceDates
01/02/2023 to 31/03/2023
Net Zero Digital Infrastructure Sandpit
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Computer ScienceDates
01/02/2023 to 31/03/2023
ARINZRIT (Applying Responsible Innovation to the Net Zero Research Infrastructure transformation)
Role
Co-Principal Investigator
Description
Creating a net zero digital infrastructure needs an understanding not just of the technical factors, but of these wider social and organisational factors which drive demand for it. By understanding…Managing organisational unit
Department of Computer ScienceDates
01/09/2022 to 31/12/2022
Net Zero Digital Infrastructure Sandpit
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of Computer ScienceDates
01/09/2022 to 31/01/2023
Net Zero Digital Infrastructure Sandpit
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of Computer ScienceDates
01/09/2022 to 31/01/2023
Thesis supervisions
Research into the possible effects of new and emerging information technology on the delivery and consumption of environmental information in businesses
Supervisors
The use of digital technology to encourage householders in the energy sector to retrofit their properties and adopt sustainable heating behaviours
Supervisors
The persistence forecast effect in time-series predictions
Supervisors
Publications
Selected publications
27/04/2013Using Crowdsourcing to Support Pro-Environmental Community Activism
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2013
Normification: Using Crowdsourced Data to Affect Third-Party Change
Proceeding CHI EA '13 CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Modeling and Assessing Variability in Energy Consumption During the Use Stage of Online Multimedia Services
Journal of Industrial Ecology
A Model for Green Design of Online News Media Services
Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on World-Wide Web
Energy Use in the Media Cloud
2nd IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science
Recent publications
17/01/2025The World is Not Enough
Proceedings, CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25)
How to Embed Sustainability into different Curricula
The Pervasive Instability of Online Sustainable Shopping
Understanding the Constraints to Transforming Online Fashion Shopping into a More Sustainable Practice
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SUST, A DIGITAL INTERVENTION DISRUPTING ONLINE FASHION SHOPPING
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SUST, A DIGITAL INTERVENTION DISRUPTING ONLINE FASHION SHOPPING