Professor Saffron O’Neill

Personal statement:

I am a geographer whose research explores the social science dimensions of climate variability and change, particularly focusing on communication and public engagement. My research specialism is the visual communication of climate change. My work is interdisciplinary and often co-designed with partners in policy, commercial or third sector roles. I am a Co-Director of ACCESS, where I lead the ACCESS Leadership College and contribute to WP4 (Data and Outreach) as well as Guiding Principles (EDI). I am also co-director of C3DS (Centre for Climate Change Communication and Data Science). I lead an enthusiastic and inspiring group of PhD students.

Key topic areas of research or interest:

• Climate change communication
• Public engagement
• Media and journalism
• Strategic communication
• Visual communication
• Climate change adaptation
• Research culture and EDI
• Qualitative methods
• Data science and AI

Publications:

• Visual portrayals of fun in the sun misrepresent heatwave risks in European newspapers. The Geographical Journal The Geographical Journal
• Radical interventions for climate-impacted systems Nature Climate Change
• Placing people at the heart of climate action PLOS Climate
• Perspectives of UK adolescents on the youth climate strikes Nature Climate Change
• Defining a visual metonym: A hauntological study of polar bear imagery in climate communication Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
• Discussion of climate change on Reddit: Polarised discourse or deliberative debate? Environmental Communication
• Introducing the Topical Collection: ‘Climate change communication and the IPCC’ Climatic Change
• The Greta Effect: Visualising climate protest in UK media and the Getty Images collections Global Environmental Change
• More than meets the eye: A longitudinal analysis of climate change imagery in the print media Climatic Change
• On the use of imagery for climate change engagement Global Environmental Change