Like I mentioned above, my research is focussed on understanding social attitudes towards climate change. Climate change is one of those wildly complex problems that has progressed from being a scientific issue, to one with varying political, social and ethical dimensions. My main focus area of research is in understanding how climate change is being framed.

Framing is a way that we help shape meaning of an issue, through emphasising different aspects of it. It’s really useful for big complex socio-political issues like climate change. Instead of talking about climate change as a scientific issue, it can be framed as an economic opportunity; a public health issue; or be framed in terms of its local vs. distant impacts (to name a few). The way you frame it can affect things like attitudes, and intended behaviours, but also presents ways for us to understand how to have more productive discussions leading to better outcomes.

My research will investigate the different framings of climate change in the Australian context with discrete but linking projects (evidence synthesis; qualitative interviews; and quantitative surveys) aimed at gaining a richer understanding of how climate change is being framed and where we can go next. Framing has a lot of value to offer and, I believe, needs to be investigated through different theoretical approaches.

Supervisor: Dr. Rebecca Colvin (RE&D)

Advisors: Prof. Iain Walker (University of Melbourne); Dr. Chris Cvitanovic (CPAS); Dr. Samantha Stanley (RSP)

I will be completing my thesis by compilation (publication) and plan to steadily publish papers throughout my PhD process. You can keep up to date with those here: https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=B_fwDisAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao