Prof Jon Barnett named new Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences

The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) promotes excellence in the social sciences in Australia and in their contribution to public policy. It coordinates the promotion of research, teaching and advice in the social sciences, promotes national and international scholarly cooperation across disciplines and sectors, comments on national needs and priorities in the social sciences, and provides advice to government on issues of national importance.

"Jon Barnett is an internationally renowned political geographer whose research investigates social impacts of, and responses to, environmental change. His research has probed the impacts of climate change on cultures, food security, migration, water security, and peace, based on fieldwork in several Pacific Island Countries, and in Australia, China and Timor-Leste. His influential voice on climate change adaptation is published repeatedly in the world’s very top geography and interdisciplinary environmental journals, including several times in Nature. (The H Index for his published research, as recorded by Google Scholar, is 33). Barnett’s advice and intellectual leadership on devising ways of adapting to climate change are sought by governments around the world; at home, he led superbly the Australian Government’s National Adaptation Research Network for Social, Economic and Institutional Dimensions of Climate Change from 2009 to 2013.

He is a Lead Author of the most recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Assessment Report, and he co-edits the major international journal Global Environmental Change. Jon Barnett is operating at the very highest level of academic research theoretically and empirically, and his engagement with governments locally and nationally in Australia and overseas is highly respected and influential. He deserves the recognition of ASSA Fellowship for his outstanding contribution to research and research-led engagement on questions of the social dimensions of environmental change, matters which are of immediate significance for the planet and its populations."

Full list of Fellows here.