Rate My Professor Jan Selby

Professor Jan Selby is Professor of International Politics and Climate Change in the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds, a position he has held since joining the university in 2023. Prior to this, he served at the University of Sheffield from 2020 to 2023, the University of Sussex from 2005 to 2020, the University of Aberystwyth from 2002 to 2005, and the University of Lancaster from 2000 to 2002. He holds a BA in Combined Social Sciences (Philosophy, Politics and Sociology) from the University of Durham, an MA in Cultural Studies from Lancaster University, and a PhD in Sociology from Lancaster University. Selby is also Honorary Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of York.

His research focuses on the political causes of and responses to climate and other environmental changes, informed by political ecology, historical materialist and post-colonial International Relations perspectives. Core specializations include climate politics, encompassing security implications in regions such as Sudan, Syria and the Lake Chad basin; water politics, with emphasis on Israeli-Palestinian dynamics and critiques of water wars narratives; climate vulnerability, adaptation and migration patterns; and climate mitigation politics, including multilateral processes, energy transitions and global methane emissions governance. Key publications include Divided Environments: An International Political Ecology of Climate Change, Water and Security (Cambridge University Press, 2022, co-authored with Gabrielle Daoust and Clemens Hoffmann), Water, Power and Politics in the Middle East (Bloomsbury), and edited volumes such as those on global governance (Springer, 2003, co-edited with Feargal Cochrane and Rosaleen Duffy), militarism and International Relations (Routledge, 2012, co-edited with Anna Stavrianakis), and the purpose of International Relations (Routledge, 2017, with Synne Dyvik and Rorden Wilkinson). He delivered the Kenneth Waltz Memorial Lecture on multilateral climate processes and energy transition politics (European Journal of International Relations, 2022) and his Faculty Inaugural Lecture at Leeds in 2024. Selby leads the Global Methane Politics (METH-POL) project, funded by a €2.5 million European Research Council advanced grant, the first such grant awarded to the University of Leeds since the UK's rejoining of the EU's Horizon programme.