I am a professor of sociology at Uppsala University, and a researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies. I moved to Sweden in 2017, after spending ten years at Bristol University in the UK. Before that, I took MA and PhD degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and I also spent time at institutions in Mexico and Canada.
I am a co-investigator on a project based at the Institute about Finding popular solutions to climate change. Previously, I was involved in the program on Climate ethics and future generations, and I took responsibility for the empirical part of the project—studying public attitudes about climate change, and investigating laypeople’s ethical intuitions.
My main ongoing project is a multiyear collaboration I am leading, about the decoupling of environmental harms from economic growth. I have also done extensive research on the issues of political and social trust, the politics of economic globalization, and social science research methods.
Trust, social movements, and the state. M. Fairbrother, M. Penker & M. Hadler. Journal of Trust Research 14(2), 157–187.
Public opinion about climate policies: A review and call for more studies of what people want. M. Fairbrother. PLOS Climate 1(5), e0000030.
"Rich people, poor people, and environmental concern: Evidence across nations and time,” European Sociological Review 29 (5), 910-922 (2013).
"Does inequality erode social trust? Results from multilevel models of US states and counties,” Social Science Research 42 (2), 347-360 (2013, with Isaac W Martin).
