Diana Liverman

Career

Diana Liverman was born in Accra, Ghana to British parents, and the family later moved back to the UK. She studied geography at University College London, the University of Toronto, and UCLA where she received her PhD in 1984. She was a student and postdoc at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado from 1982-1985, working with Steve Schneider. She then taught geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she was also affiliated with the Institute for Environmental Studies and at Penn State University where she was the Associate Director of the Earth System Science Center directed by Eric Barron. She moved to the University of Arizona in 1995 to become Director of Latin American Studies.

In 2003 she was appointed to the first Chair in Environmental Science at the University of Oxford (where she was also the first woman appointed to a chair in the School of Geography), and became Director of the Environmental Change Institute, a centre for research, teaching and outreach on the environment at Oxford University. Over five years she increased the income, size, and profile of ECI, hiring a number of distinguished scholars and working with groups such as the Tyndall Centre and James Martin 21st Century School. In 2009 she returned to Arizona to co-direct of the Institute of the Environment, with Prof. Jonathan Overpeck. She retains an affiliation with Oxford.

She has served on several national and international committees including the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, and the NAS Committee on America's Climate Choices. She also chaired the scientific advisory committee of the Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS) program and of the IHDP Earth System Governance Project. She co-chaired a transition team to create a new international research initiative, Future Earth, for an Alliance of international organizations that include ICSU, UNEP, and UNESCO.

She serves on the board of a number of organizations including cultural and creative sustainability experts Julie's Bicycle (http://www.juliesbicycle.com/)

Over 60 students have graduated under her supervision.

Scholarship

Liverman has made many contributions to understanding of the human dimensions of global environmental change. Her publications and research grants deal with climate impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, climate change and food security, and climate policy, mitigation and justice especially in the developing world. She has a particular interest in the political ecology of environmental management in the Americas, especially in Mexico.

Liverman worked on the human impacts of drought as early as the 1980s, and the impacts of climate change on food systems using early climate modelling techniques and crop simulation models. Having identified the limitations to modelling approaches, fieldwork in Mexico followed, examining vulnerability to natural hazards in the agricultural sector, and the potential impacts of climatic change on food systems. Liverman has also examined the effects of neoliberalism on Latin American society and environmental regimes, particularly along the US-Mexico border.

In recent years she has focused on the international dimensions of climate policy and the growth of the new carbon economy, and is a frequent speaker and commentator on global climate issues. She was a co-author of a series of high-profile papers on planetary boundaries and Earth system governance.

She has also led several major collaborative research projects, funded mainly by US and European agencies. In 2011 she was part of a group who briefed the Dalai Lama (2011) on climate change.

Honours

Books

Articles