Lecturer and Research Fellow

Kate English has worked as an environmental policy analyst, sustainability advocate and educator in the United States and Australia for over thirty years. Since 2009, she has lectured in climate change, sustainability, environmental policy, and community engagement at the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) in Queensland, Australia. Currently, she is the course coordinator for two undergraduate courses and two master’s level courses in sustainability. She also lectures in undergraduate courses on governance and community engagement.

Prior to lecturing at USC, Kate worked for over twenty years in environmental policy roles in the United States Congress, the Clinton-Gore Administration and the Queensland Government. She was a presidential appointee, serving as a climate change advisor to US Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, a senior legislative aide to US Senator John Kerry and legislative director to US Congressman Howard Wolpe. During those years, she draft legislation on environmental policy and climate change, and served as a US delegate to five United Nations climate change conferences. Since moving to Australia in 2001, Kate served as a climate-adaptation policy analyst in the Queensland Government’s Office of Climate Change and a senior sustainability consultant for Arup, a global engineering firm.

Kate continues engagement activities in her community and has served as a board member of the UNESCO Noosa Biosphere Reserve; the co-chair of the committee that developed the community-led Noosa Climate Action Plan, a community-developed adaptation plan; a board member of the Zonta Club of Noosa; a co-host of Noosa Community Radio’s Voices of the Biosphere radio program and a played a mentoring role in the Leadership Corps of The Climate Reality Project.

 Qualifications

Kate holds two post-graduate degrees from the University of the Sunshine Coast: a PhD, and a master’s degree in climate adaptation. She received a joint USC-CSIRO scholarship to undertake her PhD research, which examined the public’s understanding of climate change risks and the need for adaptive action.

Research Interests

• climate change communication
• climate adaptation
• environmental policy

Key Research Publications

Kate's recent publications are available at the USC Research Bank via this link.