Dr Sarah Clement Associate Professor Australian National University

My research focuses on environmental governance and policy, and how knowledge from multiple disciplines and stakeholders can inform more effective policy and management interventions.

I have worked as an environmental and social scientist both within and outside academia. My PhD focused on landscape-scale biodiversity conservation and social-ecological systems based scenario planning. After my PhD, I was a tenured member of faculty (teaching and research) in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Liverpool. I was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia before taking on my current role as Associate Professor of Environmental Policy at the Fenner School at ANU. I am also a member of the current Superstars of STEM cohort.

A key stream of my research is governance and the Anthropocene, which considers how we can better confront the social, economic, and ecological elements of transformational change. Currently that work focuses primarily on biodiversity, climate change, wildfires and other natural hazards. Another stream of my research focuses on green infrastructure and nature-based solutions (NBS) for addressing environmental challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and poor health outcomes, and exploring whether they can provide more democratic, innovative, or socially just solutions to such challenges. You can read more about my research and current projects here.

My interdisciplinary background and mix of academic and practical experience informs my approach to research, impact, and engagement. Outside of academia, I have worked as an environmental scientist, consultant, and environmental policy advisor in the US, UK, and Australia. I worked on both the social and ecological aspects of environmental issues in government, NGOs, and private companies. My projects as a researcher and a practitioner were across multiple sectors and issues, including water resource management, forest management, contaminated site remediation, ecological restoration, biodiversity conservation on private and public lands, social impact assessment, environmental impact assessment, and environmental behaviour change.

A bit more about how I got here..

I am an environmental scientist whose research focuses on the social dimensions of environmental problems. Basically, this means that I focus on how humans interact with their environment, rather than studying ecosystems or ‘the environment’ as a separate entity. I have great admiration for the environmental scientists who are very passionate about a particular topic within the broad field that is environmental science, such as wetlands, forests, water, birds, etc. However, I have always found myself more engaged in the human elements, e.g. deforestation, urban sprawl, environmental justice, risk perception, psychology and behaviour.

I am particularly interested in why we behave in the ways we do, and how we can change behaviour at the individual and organisational level to reduce our impact on the environment and improve environmental management. I was born and raised in the US, and moved to Australia for work nearly 20 years ago. This is when I began my transition from the natural sciences to the social sciences. I worked for an amazing mentor whose PhD is in cognitive psychology, and doing so helped solidify the importance of understanding human beings if we are to change the way we interact with our environment.

After working for nearly a decade after university, I returned to do my PhD. My research focused on understanding the institutional aspects of biodiversity conservation. When I say ‘institutions’, I basically mean the rules and norms (both spoken and unspoken) that drive behaviour of organisations and individuals. Institutions are part of governance, which is basically who decides, why, and how. People think institutions and governance are obscure, but they really do touch our daily lives. We govern our households. Marriage is an institution. We make decisions, and how we approach those decisions is in the realm of governance.  My PhD was at Murdoch University with the Landscapes and Policy research hub, which was funded by the National Environmental Research Program, from 2012-2016. I had the most amazing supervisor, Professor Sue Moore, who passed away the year after I finished. You can read more about her amazing life and work here and here.

I also lived in the UK after finishing my PhD, and I am a citizen of all three countries. I feel incredibly fortunate to be doing work that is intellectually challenging and personally satisfying, and to have a job that has enabled me to travel to many different places and learn about so many different topics.

I am absolutely, 100%, without a doubt…obsessed with wombats. I think they are the greatest animal on the planet.