Dr Jamie Wardman

Dr Jamie Wardman is an Associate Professor of Risk at the School of Business, University of Leicester. His research examines how risk, crises, and uncertainty are perceived, managed and communicated by organisations and different cultural groups.

He has received over £685k research funding for projects undertaken in Europe and Asia across a range of risk related domains, including food safety, terrorism, climate change, nuclear disasters, flooding, modern slavery, information and technology, and emerging infectious disease outbreaks. 

Before joining Leicester Jamie worked at the University of Nottingham and prior to that at the University of Hong Kong. He completed his PhD at King’s College London.  

Jamie has more than 30 published works, including a recent edited collection ‘COVID-19: Confronting a New World Risk’. His publications can be viewed here:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=M_iMsFcAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Jamie also serves as Editor of the Journal of Risk Research and as a board member for the Society for Risk Analysis – Europe.

During his academic career, Jamie has studied the emergence and impact of risks and crises across a range of domains, including food safety, radiation, terrorism, climate change, modern slavery, information and communications technology, flooding, and emerging infectious disease outbreaks such as COVID-19.

He has been especially interested in understanding how risk, danger, and uncertainty are managed and communicated by organisations, including the different ways in which risks are perceived, represented and spoken about, the roles of leadership and collaboration in risk-related decisions and response strategies, how this affects preparedness and resilience, and the systems by which organisations interact with others, whether through global supply chains or public institutions and the media when seeking to define and control risks. 

In the course of his work, Jamie has perhaps become best well-known for introducing an influential framework that sets out a ‘constitutive’ view of the mutual links between different risk and crisis communication imperatives and processes, which has been widely employed in international research and policy reviews. 

Jamie's research has received competitive grant funding from a variety of awarding bodies, such as the Environment Agency, the Higher Education Funding Council of England, the European Food Safety Authority, the World Health Organization, the General Research Fund of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, the Horizon Group East Midlands, and the UK Royal Society.

In one recent widely noted project, Jamie contributed to the Royal Society COVID-19 evidence review, which made recommendations to UK Government regarding the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions on reducing the spread of the disease.

The analysis and insights provided by Jamie's work have also more broadly attracted national and international media attention appearing in news outlets such as the Times and Guardian newspapers, the FT, Bloomberg news, and the Discovery Channel, amongst others.

Jamie presently serves as the Editor of the Journal of Risk Research (IF 5.35), a leading international publication for research on risk. 

Williams, S. N., Dienes, K., Jaheed, J., Wardman, J. K., & Petts, J. (2023). Effectiveness of communications in enhancing adherence to public health behavioural interventions: A COVID-19 evidence review. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 381(2257). doi:10.1098/rsta.2023.0129

Cakir, M. S., Wardman, J. K., & Trautrims, A. (2023). Ethical leadership supports safety voice by increasing risk perception and reducing ethical ambiguity: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic. Risk Analysis, 43(9), 1902-1916. doi:10.1111/risa.14053

Wardman, J. K., & Bouder, F. (2022). ‘All we have to do is be uncertain’: assessing the ‘amplification of institutional incertitude’ in European food safety and risk governance. Journal of Risk Research, 25(8), 1008-1022. doi:10.1080/13669877.2022.2053391

Spence, A., Leygue, C., Wickes, L., Withers, L., Goulden, M., & Wardman, J. K. (2021). Dumber energy at home please: Perceptions of smart energy technologies are dependent on home, workplace, or policy context in the United Kingdom. Energy Research and Social Science, 75. doi:10.1016/j.erss.2021.102021

Warren, G. W., Lofstedt, R., & Wardman, J. K. (2021). COVID-19: the winter lockdown strategy in five European nations. Journal of Risk Research, 24(3-4), 267-293. doi:10.1080/13669877.2021.1891802

Wardman, J. K., & Lofstedt, R. (2020). COVID-19: confronting a new world risk. Journal of Risk Research, 23(7-8), 833-837. doi:10.1080/13669877.2020.1842988

Wardman, J. K. (2020). Recalibrating pandemic risk leadership: Thirteen crisis ready strategies for COVID-19. Journal of Risk Research, 23(7-8), 1092-1120. doi:10.1080/13669877.2020.1842989

Bryce, C., Ring, P., Ashby, S., & Wardman, J. K. (2020). Resilience in the face of uncertainty: early lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Risk Research, 23(7-8), 880-887. doi:10.1080/13669877.2020.1756379

Goulden, M., Spence, A., Wardman, J., & Leygue, C. (2018). Differentiating ‘the user’ in DSR: Developing demand side response in advanced economies. Energy Policy, 122, 176-185. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2018.07.013

Wardman, J. K., & Löfstedt, R. (2018). Anticipating or Accommodating to Public Concern? Risk Amplification and the Politics of Precaution Re-examined. Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis, 38(9), 1802-1819. doi:10.1111/risa.12997

Wardman, J. K. (2017). Nothing to fear but fear itself?: Liquid provocations for new media and fear of crime. In The Routledge International Handbook on Fear of Crime (pp. 121-134). doi:10.4324/9781315651781

Burgess, A., Wardman, J., & Mythen, G. (2018). Considering risk: placing the work of Ulrich Beck in context. Journal of Risk Research, 21(1), 1-5. doi:10.1080/13669877.2017.1383075

Mythen, G., Burgess, A., & Wardman, J. K. (2018). The prophecy of Ulrich Beck: signposts for the social sciences. Journal of Risk Research, 21(1), 96-100. doi:10.1080/13669877.2017.1362029

Wardman, J. K., & Mythen, G. (2016). Risk communication: against the Gods or against all odds? Problems and prospects of accounting for Black Swans. Journal of Risk Research, 19(10), 1220-1230. doi:10.1080/13669877.2016.1262002

Mythen, G., & Wardman, J. K. (2016). Communicating risk under high uncertainty: developing cross-disciplinary knowledge. Journal of Risk Research, 19(10), 1217-1219. doi:10.1080/13669877.2016.1261996

Löfstedt, R. E. V., & Wardman, J. K. (2016). State of the art transparency: lessons from Europe and North America. Journal of Risk Research, 19(9), 1079-1081. doi:10.1080/13669877.2016.1249713

Wardman, J. K. (2015). Editorial announcements. Journal of Risk Research, 18(1), 1. doi:10.1080/13669877.2014.991197

Wardman, J. K. (2014). Sociocultural vectors of effective risk communication. Journal of Risk Research, 17(10), 1251-1257. doi:10.1080/13669877.2014.942498

Foster, D., Lawson, S., Linehan, C., Wardman, J., & Blythe, M. (2012). 'Watts in it for me?' Design implications for implementing effective energy interventions in organisations. In Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings (pp. 2357-2366). doi:10.1145/2207676.2208396

Lofstedt, R., Bouder, F., Wardman, J., & Chakraborty, S. (2011). The changing nature of communication and regulation of risk in Europe. Journal of Risk Research, 14(4), 409-429. doi:10.1080/13669877.2011.557479

Wardman, J. K. (2008). The constitution of risk communication in advanced liberal societies. Risk Analysis, 28(6), 1619-1637. doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2008.01108.x

Sheppard, B., Rubin, G. J., Wardman, J. K., & Wessely, S. (2006). Viewpoint: Terrorism and dispelling the myth of a panic prone public. Journal of Public Health Policy, 27(3), 219-245. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jphp.3200083

Wardman, J. K. (2006). Toward a critical discourse on affect and risk perception. Journal of Risk Research, 9(2), 109-124. doi:10.1080/13669870500454773

Jamie is broadly open to supervising students with risk, crisis, and disaster related interests in the following topics:

- Risk management

- Risk perception

- Risk communication 

- Risk leadership

- Risk preparedness and resilience

Please contact him if you are interested in undertaking a PhD.