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Dr Richard Gunton

Richard

Senior Lecturer In Data Science

Email: r.gunton@qmul.ac.uk
Website: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Gunton

Profile

Dr Richard Gunton PhD (Leeds) MA (Cantab) is a Senior Lecturer in Data Science.

He held postdoctoral positions in ecology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) and the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (France).  He has also worked in Australia, with a stint at Charles Darwin University and participation in a project of the Australian Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. Back in the UK, a fellowship with the Centre for Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (www.cecan.ac.uk) led him into environmental ethics and policy evaluation.  He then worked in financial modelling at Sciteb Ltd, a management consultancy in London, and most recently as a Senior Lecturer in Statistics at the University of Winchester. 

Roles

  1. External examiner, Middlesex University
  2. Fellow, Digital Environment Research Institute
  3. Member of Queen Mary Academy’s “AI In Learning” Community of Practice

Teaching

DAT6501: AI and Statistical Data Analysis

IOT453U: Quality-Driven Development

IOT592W/646W: Software Development and Quality

Dissertation supervision: Research projects in Data Analysis (BSc) and Data Science (MSc)

Research

Research Interests:

Dr Richard Gunton's research focuses on environmental ethics and sustainability.  His early work in ecology, including spatial population dynamics, vegetation science and community assembly, led into work on conservation planning and ecological value theory.  His policy evaluation tool, the Pluralistic Evaluation Framework (https://www.pluralisticevaluation.org/), has enjoyed interest from a number of public and private organisations. Current work includes developing this tool for use in business and other areas of policy-making, while clarifying the nature of environmental goods, values and obligations for inter-cultural scenarios.

 

Connecting quantitative and qualitative methods, Richard also works on the philosophy of data science (objectivity, beliefs and the problem of inference), and on understanding the functions of artificial intelligence tools in scientific research, teaching and learning.  He is passionate about communicating scientific and philosophical ideas in fresh and relevant ways for diverse audiences.

 

He is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and the International Society for Science and Religion.

Publications

A full list of publications can be found on Google Scholar

Beale NCL, Gunton RM, Bashe KL, Battey HS, MacKay RS. (2025) Dynamics of value-tracking in financial markets. J. Dynamics & Games. doi:10.3934/jdg.2024003.  

Gunton RM, van der Stoep J, Araya YN, Jochemsen H (2024) Sustainability beyond the triple bottom line: evaluating transformative change in food systems. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 8:1483942.

Gunton RM (2023) What is enlightened agriculture? A multi-normative approach to the nature and values of food production. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 7:979818

Gunton RM, Basden A, Hejnowicz AP, van Asperen E, Christie I, Hanson DR, Hartley SE (2022) Valuing beyond economics: a pluralistic evaluation framework for participatory policy-making. Ecological Economics 196:107420

Gunton RM, Stafleu MD, Reiss MJ (2021) A general theory of objectivity: contributions from the Reformational philosophy tradition. Foundations of Science 27:941-955

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