Freya Wise

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Dr Freya Wise is an ESRC Research Fellow at the University of the West of England (UWE) in the Centre for Advanced Built Environment Research (CABER) and a Visiting Fellow at The Open University (OU).

Freya completed her interdisciplinary PhD at the OU in 2022 on: Carbon reduction and heritage retention: retrofitting appraoches for vernacular buildings and their residents. She also has an MLitt in Warstudies from the University of Glasgow and an Open BSc from the OU. Freya has subsequently worked in research at London South Bank University informing retrofit services for local authorities, at the OU on systematic approaches to increasing heat pump uptake, and on commercial embodied carbon calculations. Freya has been involved in work with LETI, the National Retorfit Hub, the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard and Historic England.

Freya is interested in using multidisciplinary approaches to increasing sustainability in the built environment, with a specific focus on existing buildings. Freya's multidisciplinary PhD research focussed on reducing carbon for residential heritage buildings while retaining their heritage values and explored both how people use and value their homes as well as technical issues such as how traditional buildings are represented in energy modelling tools and the operational and embodied carbon potential of a wide range of retrofits. Freya's research seeks to combine the 'what' and 'how' of hard science with the 'why' of social science through mixed methods and interdisciplinary research.

Freya is interested in all aspects of increasing sustainability in the built environment but particularly issues relating to heritage, embodied carbon, how people use and value buildings, energy modelling and making retrofit information more accessible and increasing retrofit literacy.

Experience

  • 2022–present
    Visiting Fellow, The Open University
  • 2024–present
    Research fellow, The University of the West of England
  • 2023–2024
    Postdoctoral research associate, The Open University
  • 2022–2023
    Postdoctoral research associate, London South Bank University
  • 2018–2022
    Postgraduate researcher, The Open University

Education

  • 2022 
    The Open University, PhD in carbon reduction and heritage retention from vernacular buildings
  • 2017 
    The University of Glasgow , MLitt War studies
  • 2016 
    The Open University, BSc in environmental and earth science and renewable energy engineering

Publications

  • 2027
    Building retrofit for energy and carbon reduction: identifying future research priorities and trends from a critical analysis and systematic mapping review of the global literature, Applied Energy
  • 2026
    The potential for a transdisciplinary systems approach to improve national policy analysis: learning from UK cases of home energy transitions, Frontiers in Sustainability
  • 2025
    Retrofit information challenges and potential solutions: Perspectives of households, retrofit professionals and local policy makers in the United Kingdom, Energy research and social science
  • 2023
    Embodied carbon and building retrofit: a heritage example: in The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Carbon in the Built Environment, Routledge
  • 2022
    Is it all about the windows? Residents' values in residential heritage buildings, Acta Polytechnica CTU Proceedings
  • 2022
    Residents’ comfort perceptions in domestic heritage buildings, IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science
  • 2021
    Rethinking retrofit of residential heritage buildings, Buildings and Cities
  • 2021
    Reducing carbon from heritage buildings: the importance of residents’ views, values and behaviours, Journal of Architectural Conservation
  • 2019
    Considering embodied energy and carbon in heritage buildings – a review, IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science

Grants and Contracts

  • 2024
    Low carbon residential retrofit: considering the resident as well as the carbon
    Role:
    PI
    Funding Source:
    Economic and Social Research Council
  • 2018
    Carbon reduction and heritage retention from vernacular residential buildings
    Role:
    PI
    Funding Source:
    Arts and Humanities Research Council

Contact Freya for

  • General
  • Media request
  • Speaking request
  • Consulting / Advising
  • Research collaboration