About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

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Oli Berry

Lead Behavioural Scientist, sustainable future mission

Oli is the Lead Behavioural Scientist for the sustainable future mission, where he uses behavioural science to help accelerate the decarbonisation of household heating in the UK.

Oli is a mixed methods researcher who specialises in using an understanding of behaviour to inform the development of sustainability policies and interventions. He has a particular interest in how to effect widespread behavioural change, leveraging social norms, networks, and social identities to change individual behaviour.

At Nesta, his focus is on bringing a behavioural science perspective to project work, such as identifying barriers and motivators for specific behaviours, or the psychological basis of decision making. Oli also specialises in evaluation, including implementation and process evaluations, theory-based evaluation and (quasi-) experimental methods.

Prior to working at Nesta, Oli spent two years at BIT as a research advisor where he designed, implemented, and analysed a number of field and online trials.

Oli has a MSc in Behavioural Science from the London School of Economics and a MA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge. In his Master’s dissertation, he explored whether social norms and social identity theory could help promote pro-environmental food choices.