Overview

I am an environmental social scientist, specialising in environmental change, development, vulnerability and resilience. My research focuses on how individuals and societies understand and respond to change, and their different capacities for adaptation and transformation. I am committed to interdisciplinary research on sustainability and have led international research teams to examine environmental change and poverty alleviation in developing countries.

2012-2020 Chair in Social Science, University of Exeter
1991-2012 University of East Anglia (Professor of Development Studies since 2004)
2009-12 ESRC Professorial Fellowship on ‘Resilient Development in Social Ecological Systems’
2004-2010 Deputy Director for Social Sciences and Leader, International Development Programme, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

Qualifications

PhD Women’s farming groups in semi-arid Kenya (University of Nottingham)
MSc Tropical Agricultural Development (University of Reading)
BSc Agricultural and Environmental Science (University of Newcastle upon Tyne)

Career

Katrina Brown is a world-leading social scientist working at the interface of international development, environmental change and sustainability. She has a longstanding commitment to interdiscsiplinary research, working with collaborators across social, ecological, and human sciences and with arts and humanities scholars and creative practitioners.  Her book, Resilience, Development and Global Change resulted from an ESRC Professorial Fellowship, Resilient Development in Social Ecological Systems, and presents a re-visioning of resilience for development.  She has advised international research programmes, such as IHDP, the ARC Centre for Excellence on Coral Reefs and Stockholm Resilience Centre. Her record of support for early career research is exemplary, she has initiated and directed Masters level courses (East Anglia and Exeter), led and participated in Summer Schools, and supervised 34 PhDs to completion. In 2013 she won the first ‘AXA Outlook’ award for pioneering work in Kenya on resilience and poverty using Forum Theatre, which was the subject of a National Geographic film in 2014. In 2018 she was awarded a honorary doctorate Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Wageningen, Netherlands, in recognition of ‘outstanding contributions to environmental social science, in the fields of political ecology, conservation and resilience’. She was elected Fellow, of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2018, and was a member of the GCRF Strategic Advisory Group from 2016-2020. She has chaired the Scientific Management Committee, of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies since 2015.She is identified as one of the most influential cross-disciplianry scientists on the recent 2020 Highly Cited Researchers list.

As Professor Emerita she continues to research and write on environmental change, inequality and resilience, and is active as an advisor to international scientific organisations and programmes. 

Research group links

• Environment and Sustainability