Our People
Principal Investigator and Steering Committee
Professor Catriona McKinnon (PI)
Catriona McKinnon is Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations. She has published widely on issues of climate justice, on topics such as corrective justice and compensation for climate risks, the precautionary principle, triage in climate catastrophes, the ethical implications of the carbon budget, liberal approaches to climate justice, and the role of moral shame in motivating people to take action on climate change. Across all this work she has a particular interest in questions of intergenerational justice. She presently holds a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship grant for a project exploring international criminal law as a governance tool for climate change.
Professor Chukwumerije Okereke
Chuks Okereke is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Science. His research interests include the governance of climate adaptation and low carbon development in Africa, ethical dimensions of global environmental and climate governance, and the climate impact of business and corporate strategies for responding to climate change. Dr Okereke was the pioneer Moderator of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Climate Diplomacy Course and has served as a consultant to DFID, UNDP, the World Bank and a number of African Governments.
School of Agriculture, Policy and Development
Dr Alex Arnall
Dr Arnall is a human geographer conducting research and teaching on climate change, human migration/mobility and rural livelihoods. He has worked as a Consultant for the international firm, Environmental Resources Management, and then as a Research Officer at the Institute of Development Studies, leading the Institute's work on Adaptive Social Protection. He has also carried out consultancy for a number of international NGOs and development agencies, including GIZ, Save the Children, Oxfam GB and WWF. In addition, Dr Arnall is a Board Member of the Open Access Journal 'Development Studies Research', as well as an Editor of the Livelihoods Restoration section of the International Network on Displacement and Resettlement (INDR) website. His most recent research has been based in central and southern Mozambique, and he also has work experience in South Africa, Angola, Uganda, Brazil, the Maldives and Russia.
Dr Nick Bardsley
Dr Bardsley is interested in the economics of climate change; in particular, in insights from ecological economics and behavioural economics. For example, a current research project uses experimental methods to study household energy use, aiming, for example, for insight into the 'rebound' phenomenon.
Professor Peter Dorward
Dr Dorward's research encompasses a wide range of topics related to smallholder farming and facilitating innovation and the spread of improved practices. Particular areas of interest include the development of climate services for smallholder farmers (including PICSA http://www.walker-institute.ac.uk/research/PICSA/ ), farmer perceptions of climate variability and change and their implications for agricultural interventions, promoting smallholder adaptation and developing resilience to climate variability and change. Dr Dorward has carried out research and consultancy assignments for a variety of organisations across Africa and Central America.
Professor Elizabeth Robinson
Professor Robinson is an environmental economist, specialising in the management of natural resources in low and middle income countries. She is particularly interested in the interface between people and natural resources, with an emphasis on the commodification of the natural resource base in low and middle income countries, links to institutions, carbon markets, equity, and development.
School of Biological Sciences
Professor Tom Oliver
Dr Oliver's research focusses on biodiversity. In particular he is interested in interactions between land use and climate change on biodiversity, spatiotemporal indicators for biodiversity and ecosystem services, and biodiversity and the resilience of ecosystem functions. He is a member of the Ecology Research Group and several working groups on habitat fragmentation and climate change adaptation.
Department of Economics
Dr Sophie Clot
Sophie Clot's research interests are in behavioural economics with a particular focus on how human behaviour interacts with environmental conservation and development issues, using both lab and field experiments. Sophie is involved in research studying the mechanisms of behavioural adaptation and the design of incentives schemes from a general standpoint as well as in research with a more applied approach. Some of her recent projects deal with the effect of moral self-licensing on pro environmental behaviour as well as the impacts of time preferences and framing on environmental conservation programmes.
Dr Marina Della Giusta
Dr Della Giusta's field of interest is behavioural and social economics, in particular social norms, values and conformism, behaviour change and sustainability, gender and preferences, wellbeing, economics of prostitution, and economics of care. She has been involved in the evaluation of international development projects, as well as government policy in the UK at both national and regional levels. Dr Della Giusta is currently Head of the Department of Economics.
Professor Uma Kambhampati
Professor Kambhampati's interests include child labour and schooling, the impact of institutions on development, individual well-being and life satisfaction, and productivity and competitiveness of manufacturing firms. She will take up the post of Head of the School of Politics, Economics and International Relations in August 2015.
Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences
Professor Mike Goodman
Mike Goodman is Professor of Environment and Development/Human Geography, with particular interests in the ethics of the Clean Development Mechanism and Emissions Trading Schemes.
School of Law
Professor Paul Almond
Professor Almond's research interests are in the areas of criminal law, regulation and enforcement, criminology and criminal justice, corporate crime and health and safety law. He is Director of Research for the School of Law.
Dr Alison Bisset
Dr Bisset's research interests include transitional justice, international criminal law, international children's rights and international judicial cooperation. She has provided training on international criminal law and transitional justice for the British Army, the US Africa Command and the Commonwealth Secretariat. In 2013-14, she worked with the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law on transitional justice in Nepal.
Professor Susan Breau
Susan Carolyn Breau is Professor of Law and Head of the School of Law at the University of Reading. She obtained her PhD at the London School of Economics in 2003 and she has taught at Queen's University Belfast, the University of Surrey and Flinders University in Australia. She was also the Dorset Fellow in International Law at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law from 2003-2006. Her research primarily focuses on international law on the use of force, international humanitarian law and international human rights law. She has written on environmental issues that result from the weapons used during armed conflict. Her current monograph on the Responsibility to Protect includes a chapter on the international obligations associated with protection of the environment which includes an analysis of the precautionary principle.
Professor Chris Hilson
As an environmental lawyer, Professor Hilson's research interests lie predominantly in environmental and climate law and policy at European and national levels. He has written extensively on issues of risk and risk perception, climate regulation, law and social movements, climate change litigation, human rights and the environment, and environmental/ecological citizenship. He has a particular interest in how courts can be used to achieve policy and social change and also in the role which rights and duties can play as part of legal mobilisation and wider citizenship practice. In relation to risk, Professor Hilson's research has focused both on the way in which principles such as the precautionary principle have been used by the courts and on how judges have or have not allowed space for risk perceptions to be considered in decision-making by public authorities. He is interested in how all of these issues play out in the context of climate justice.
Dr Dimitris Kyritsis
Dr Kyritsis's areas of interest include theory of law, constitutional theory, political authority and obligation, and religious freedom.
Dr Mark Wilde
Dr Wilde's interests include tort law, environmental law, and law and technology. He has a keen interest in the regulation of atmospheric emissions and the interplay between law, technology, policy and economics.
Dr Reuven (Ruvi) Ziegler 
Dr. Reuven (Ruvi) Ziegler is a tenured Lecturer in Law at the University of Reading, where he is a member of the Global Law at Reading research group (GLAR). He is Editor-in-Chief of the Working Paper Series, Refugee Law Initiative, University of London; Academic Fellow of the Inner Temple; Research Associate, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford; and the Civil Liberties & Human Rights Section Convenor of the Society of Legal Scholars. Ruvi is also a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, analysing the treatment of African asylum seekers in Israel as part of the Institute's 'Democratic Principles' project. Ruvi's areas of research interest include Citizenship & Electoral Rights, International Refugee Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, and International Humanitarian Law. His forthcoming book, 'Voting Rights of Refugees', will be published in 2016 by Cambridge University Press.
Department of Meteorology
Professor Richard Allan
Richard Allan is Professor of Climate Change. His research interests include the Earth's radiative energy balance and climate, testing simulation of Earth's climate with observations, and public understanding and communication of climate science.
Professor Nigel Arnell
Nigel Arnell is Professor of Climate Change Science in the Department of Meteorology, and will have served as Director of the Walker Institute for Climate System Research for eight years when he steps down from that post in August 2015. His research interests include the impact of climate change on hydrological regimes and water resources, impacts of climate change across the global domain, the use of climate information in adaptation to climate change, climate change and water management, climate policy and the impacts of climate change, and climate change and risk assessments.
Dr Andrew Charlton-Perez
Dr Charlton-Perez's interests include geoengineering, communication of uncertainty for natural hazards, stratospheric predictability and public understanding of climate science.
Professor William Collins
William Collins is Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Earth System Modelling. His research interests include biogeochemical feedbacks in the Earth System, climate impacts of short-lived climate pollutants, impacts of climate change on air quality, and impacts of ozone and nitrogen deposition on ecosystems. Professor Collins has contributed to reports for the UNEP, IPCC and World Bank.
Dr Ed Hawkins
Dr Hawkins' interests include climate variability and change, especially for the near-term; the history of climate science; and public understanding and visualisation of climate science. He is a regular contributor to discussions on climate science on national radio, television and newspapers.
Professor Rowan Sutton
Professor Sutton's research interests include the role of ocean-atmosphere interactions in climate, climate variability and change, and predictability and prediction. He is the Director of Climate Research in the UK National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS).
Professor Ted Shepherd
Professor Shepherd's research interests include theoretical aspects of geophysical fluid dynamics, with an emphasis on large-scale atmospheric dynamics and tropospheric circulation. the role of ocean-atmosphere interactions in climate, climate variability and change, and predictability and prediction. He is the Research Division Leader for Climate at Reading.
Department of Philosophy
James Andow
James Andow is a lecturer in moral philosophy. He is currently teaching Climate Justice in the Department of Philosophy. As a researcher, he is interested in the role that ordinary ways of thinking about philosophical issues should play in our theorising about them. He is an experimental philosopher which means that he conducts empirical research to explore ordinary ways of thinking about philosophical issues. He is a founder member and organiser of Experimental Philosophy Group UK.
Dr Luke Elson
Luke Elson has research interests in moral philosophy, and especially in questions of vagueness/indeterminacy in ethics and rationality. He is in the early stages of a research project concerning 'climate rationality': even if we agree that climate change is a problem, and that we owe a duty to others (in space or in time) to mitigate it, there remain questions such as: how much of our present-day energy consumption should we sacrifice-can a line be drawn in any non-arbitrary way? Vagueness often poses decision-theoretic problems in contexts where many individually-negligible costs amount to something quite significant: since each cigarette brings a clear amount of pleasure, and has negligible health effects, shouldn't we (setting aside addiction) smoke it? But then shouldn't we smoke every cigarette? Following the work of Chrisoula Andreou, Dr Elson is interested in the connections between climate change and the so-called 'Puzzle of the Self-Torturer'.
Professor Brad Hooker
Professor Hooker's interests include impartiality, fairness and the philosophy of law. He served as the President of the British Philosophical Association from 2006-2009.
Department of Politics and International Relations
Dr Jonathan Golub
Dr Golub's interests include European Union institutions and policymaking, international political economy, environmental policy and judicial politics.
Dr Robert Jubb
Robert Jubb is Lecturer in Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations. He has published on a number of questions related to climate change justice, particularly that of participation in and responsibility for collective harms and wrongs. In that context, he is also interested in discussions about the acceptability of various forms of resistance to injustice, up to and including political violence. His work has appeared in, amongst others, Journal of Politics, Political Studies, Journal of Moral Philosophy, and Social Theory and Practice.
Dr Patrick Tomlin
Patrick Tomlin is a political philosopher working in the Department of Politics and International Relations. He has a variety of research interests which relate to climate change. These include distributive justice, intergenerational justice, moral and political decision-making under moral and empirical uncertainty, and philosophical issues around crime and punishment. His work has appeared in journals such as Ethics, Journal of Political Philosophy, Law and Philosophy and Political Studies.
Professor Dominik Zaum
Professor Zaum's research interests cover the political economy of state- and peacebuilding in conflict-affected countries, and the politics of international organisations, especially the UN Security Council. He is a member of the Steering Committee for the NOW/DFID supported Conflict and Cooperation in the Management of Climate Change programme and Senior Research Fellow in Conflict and Fragility at the UK Department for International Development. Professor Zaum will step down as Head of the School of Politics, Economics and International Relations in August 2015 to take up the new post of Research Dean for Prosperity & Resilience.
