Rate My Professor Lauren Rickards

Professor Lauren Rickards is Professor of Climate Change Adaptation and Director of the La Trobe Climate Change Adaptation Lab in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University, positions she has held since 2023. Previously, she was Professor in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University from 2020, advancing from senior lecturer (2015-2016) and associate professor (2017-2019) roles, and served as Director of the Urban Futures Enabling Capability Platform from 2021 to 2022. Her career includes Research Fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne (2013-2014), Coordinator of the Primary Industries Adaptation Research Network at the University of Melbourne (2011), Associate Partner and Senior Consultant at RM Consulting Group (2006-2010), Consultant at The Nous Group (2006), and Vice-Principal at Janet Clarke Hall, University of Melbourne (2004-2005). Rickards holds a DPhil in Human Geography from the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford (2006), an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford (2001), and a BSc (Hons) in Physical Geography and Ecology from the University of Melbourne (1999). She received the Rhodes Scholarship (Australia-at-Large, 1999).

Rickards' research examines climate change adaptation through social research, focusing on impacts across sectors such as environmental sustainability, government, agriculture, water, education, health, and emergency management, implications for collective wellbeing, multispecies justice, research impact, UN Sustainable Development Goals, the role of universities, innovation, and systemic changes in the Anthropocene. She was Lead Author for the Australasia chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Key publications include 'Adaptation opportunities, constraints, and limits' (2014), 'Transformational adaptation: agriculture and climate change' (2012), 'Multispecies justice: theories, challenges, and a research agenda for environmental politics' (2022), and the co-authored book 'The Sustainable Development Goals and Higher Education: A Transformative Agenda?' (2021, with W. Steele). As chief investigator, she has led projects totaling $4.3 million completed and $1.9 million current, including Australia-India research grants ($330,000, 2024) and ARC Discovery Project DP200102599. Awards include Wiley Best Journal Article Award (2021), Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity as part of the IPCC (2022), RMIT Research Excellence Awards (2017, 2019), Teaching Excellence Award (2017), and finalist for the Australian Museum Eureka Prize in Sustainable Agriculture (2013). She edited Dialogues in Human Geography (2016-2022), served on the International Science Council and UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction Expert Review Group (2020-2021), and is Senior Research Fellow with the Earth System Governance Project (since 2015).