Mike Hulme

I am Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA).  My work explores the idea of climate change using historical, cultural and scientific analyses, seeking to illuminate the numerous ways in which climate change is deployed in public and political discourse.  I believe it is important to understand and describe the varied ideological, political and ethical work that the idea of climate change is currently performing across different social worlds.

My research interests are therefore concerned with representations of climate change in history, culture and the media; with how knowledge of climate change is constructed (especially through the IPCC) and the interactions between climate change knowledge and policy; and with the construction, application and evaluation of climate scenarios for impacts, adaptation and integrated assessments.  I welcome approaches from graduate students seeking to study for a PhD in any of these areas.

I was the founding Director (2000-2007) of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research; but since July 2007 I have had no role or responsibility in the Centre. A longer bio and CV can be found here – including a statement of my financial interests and research funders.  I have also posted a research narrative offering a personal account of my career to date, together with a personal statement about climate change.

All my academic publications and citations can be viewed here Google Scholar (Mike Hulme) or here Web of Knowledge ResearcherID.

Latest posts (13 May 2013)

(13 May)  ‘Climate change and virtue: an apologetic’.  The transcript for my Annual Relgious Studies Lecture at Queen’s University Belfast, 1 May 2013, can be found here.

(6 May)  I have a new blog post at the 3S Blog: ’Metaphors: taking responsibility for our choices’ in which I reflect on the power and hazards of crafting metaphors in environmental science.

(5 May)  I will be speaking at the UEA Centre for Writing and Science’s day event on Saturday 25 May at the University of East Anglia: “Writing and climate change: the story so far … how do writers and scientists communicate the controversies of climate change?  Also a lecture ‘Between two degrees and the rainbow’ at the Holberg Prize Symposium, in honour of the 2013 Holberg Prize winner Bruno Latour, on Tuesday 4 June, University of Bergen and a panel discussion with Sheila Jasanoff at the ASLE-UKI 2013 Biennial Conference, “Ecological encounters: agency, identity, interactions“, University of Guildford, Thursday 29 August.

(24 April)  “‘A safe operating space for humanity’: do people’s beliefs need to change?” I have posted here the transcript of the talk I gave at the launch of the York Environmental Sustainability Institute, 8-9 April, University of York.  You can view the video here and the slides here.

(23 April)  My essay “Does (climate) science need to be consensual to be authoritative?” is now published in the collection of essays ‘Future directions for scientific advice in Whitehall’ (pp.142-147), edited by Rob Doubleday and James Wilsdon.  This was talk I originally gave on Wednesday 6 February (view here) at the STEPS Centre Conference on ‘Credibility across cultures‘.

(14 April)  WIREs Climate Change: Latest issue Vol.4(3). The latest issue of WIREs Climate Change is now available on-line.    The 6 review articles in this issue include an assessment of the legacy of the Kyoto Protocol by Bert Metz; an overview of climate change and human rights by Derek Bell; a review of ensemble climate modelling and robust predictions by Wendy Parker; and a review of the politics of climate change in India by Navroz Dubash.  WIREs Climate Change acquired its first Impact Factor in July this year: 2.91 which places it 4th  highest in the field of ‘environmental studies’ and 7th in ‘geography’.  Access to the journal is through institutional subscription, so make sure you have asked your institutional library to subscribe.

My H-Index is 39 as of August 2012 (based on Thomson’s Web of Knowledge; see my ResearcherID; H Index = 38 in Scopus).  Thomson Reuters reports Mike Hulme as the 10th most cited author in the world in the field of climate change, between 1999 and 2009 (ScienceWatch, Nov/Dec 2009, see Table 2).

Contact Details

Science, Society and Sustainability (3S) Group, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, England

T: +44 (0)1603 593162; F: +44 (0)1603 593901; E: m.hulme at uea.ac.uk

Last updated: 13 May 2013