Dr Freya Wise

Professional biography

Dr Freya Wise is an ESRC Research Fellow at the University of the West of England (UWE) 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 approaches for vernacular buildings and their residents. She also has an MLitt in War Studies from the University of Glasgow and an Open BSc at the OU. Freya has subsequently worked on research at London South Bank University informing retrofit services for local authorities, at 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 Retrofit Hub, the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard and Historic England. 

Research interests

Freya is interested in using multidisciplinary approaches to increase sustainability in the built environment, with a specific focus on existing buildings. Freya's multidisciplinary PhD research focused on reducing carbon from 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 building performance is represented in energy modelling tools and the operational and embodied carbon reduction 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'. She is also interested in all aspects of history, especially military and naval history up to the 18th century and her historical interested feed into her work on heritage values.   

Impact and engagement

Freya thinks it is important that researchers work to share their research in an accessible and useful manner with non-specialist audiences and that policy should be evidence based and informed by research. She has created various articles and award-winning short videos aimed at sharing her work with the general public and regularly contributes material to government consultations and calls for evidence on the sustainable built environment.

She has also participated in task groups with LETI (Low Energy Transformation Initiative) around creating professional guidance on retrofit and presented at events organised by Historic England, The Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance and The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, in addition to academic conferences. Freya is also in involved in the National Retrofit Hub and the UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standard. 

Freya's fellowship at UWE includes a partnership with the Lake District National Park Authority to work together to provide information on retrofit to households in the National Park.