Keeping under 1.5°C: are we doing enough to avoid dangerous climate change?

Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is the inaugural Director of the Global Change Institute and Professor of Marine Science at the University of Queensland. Prof Hoegh-Guldberg is deeply-motivated by a desire to communicate science effectively, undertake game-changing research and to find high-impact solutions to address several of the most pressing and serious challenges facing humanity worldwide, such as climate change, food security, clean energy and population growth.

Prof Hoegh-Guldberg has worked extensively with the media, believing that scientists need to extend the impact of their science using the full set of communication options. He has published works that include over 200 refereed publications and book chapters and is one of the most cited authors within the peer-reviewed literature on climate change and its impacts on natural ecosystems.

Robyn Eckersley was educated at the University of Western Australia, Cambridge University (UK) and the University of Tasmania, and taught political science at Monash University from 1992-2001 before joining the University of Melbourne in 2002. She has published widely in the fields of environmental politics, political theory and international relations, with a special focus on the ethics and governance of climate change, including in journals such as Political Studies, European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, Ethics and International Affairs and Global Environmental Politics. Her book The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty (2004) won the Melbourne Woodward Medal in 2005 for the best research in Humanities and Social Sciences and was runner up in the International Studies Association’s Sprout Award for 2005 for the best book on Environmental Studies. She was a Visiting Professor at the Research Center for Global Welfare, The Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Chiba University in Japan in 2008, a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, from August 2009 to January 2010; and served as Arne Naess Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo, November 2010 to January 2011. She was elected as Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2007. She as also served as Chair of the Organising Committee of the Sixth Oceanic Conference on International Studies (OCIS VI), held at the University of Melbourne on 9-11 July 2014; Chair of the Oceanic Conference on International Studies Transition Committee and Co-convenor/Treasurer of the Australian Political Studies Association Environmental Policy and Politics Research Standing Group. She has served as Director of the Master of International Relations Program 2011-2012 and Chair of the Discipline of Political Science from 2008-2010, 2014 and second semester 2015.