Irene Lorenzoni’s research interests focus on understandings of, and engagement with, climate change and energy. Through an interdisciplinary approach, She is particularly interested in the relationship between individual perceptions and understandings of environmental issues - specifically climate change, its causes and consequences over different timescales- and behaviours. Critical to this work is an appreciation and understanding of the societal context in which individuals operate, hence her focus also on the communication of climate change and policy. She has explored some of these issues recently in work on perceived barriers to engagement with climate change and their influence on individual and institutional responses (both in terms of mitigation and adaptation); carbon capability; public attitudes towards current energy use and future energy options, especially in relation to sustainability; the construction of climate and energy discourses in the UK. Achieving a degree in Environmental Sciences at UEA signalled for her the start of her professional career in an area she had been keenly interested in since her childhood. Having undertaken an MSc in European Environmental Policy and Regulation at Lancaster University, she joined the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA again, pursuing research stemming from a strong drive to understand how people think about environmental issues and timescales, and how these relate to their choices, preferences and actions in daily life. Based in the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE), some of her work focused on exploring conceptualisations of the future through socio-economic and climate scenarios with UK stakeholders. Having developed a curiosity in individual perceptions of, and responses to, global climate change she pursued this through a cross-cultural PhD, subsequently joining the Centre for Environmental Risk (CER) and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. In August 2006 she took up the position of lecturer the School where she teaches modules on environmental politics, environment and society, interdisciplinary social sciences. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, recently co-editing - With Prof Neil Adger and Prof Karen O'Brien - a CUP book on Adaptation to Climate Change. She is also a contributing author of the IPCC's Third and Fourth Assessment Reports; member of editorial board of the Wiley Interdisciplinary Review (WIREs): Climate Change; and Fellow of the RSA.

Content by Irene Lorenzoni:

• Adaptation and Its Social and Behavioural Limits, 23 Mar 2010 in Videos