I am Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. I am also a Professorial Fellow of Pembroke College, where I am the Director Studies for Geography.
My work explores the idea of climate change using historical, cultural and scientific analyses. I seek to illuminate the numerous ways in which climate change is deployed in public and political discourse, captured in my book ‘Climate Change‘ in the Routledge Key Ideas in Geography book series, published July 2021. I believe it is important to understand and describe the varied ideological, political and ethical work that the idea of climate change is currently performing across different social worlds. My most recent book ‘Climate Change Isn’t Everything‘ (Polity, 2023) challenges the reductionist and myopic framing of climate policies around global temperature and net-zero targets.
My research interests are therefore concerned with representations of climate change in history, culture and media; the relationship between climate and society, including climate engineering and adaptation; how knowledge of climate change is constructed (especially through the IPCC); and the interactions between climate change knowledge and policy.
I was head of department between October 2022 and December 2023 and, prior to joining Cambridge, I was in the Department of Geography at King’s College London (2013-2017), where I was head of department between March 2016 and September 2017. Before 2013/14, I worked at the University of East Anglia in the School of Environmental Sciences for 25 years, joining the University in September 1988. During this time I was a member of the Climatic Research Unit (1988-2000) and then the founding Director (2000-2007) of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. In 2007, I received a personalised certificate from the IPCC, recognising my contribution to the (joint) award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC. In March 2021, I was awarded the Eduard Bruckner Prize by the German Meteorological Society for outstanding contributions to interdisciplinary climate research. Between 2009 and 2022 I was founding Editor-in-Chief of the review journal WIREs Climate Change.
A recent CV (autumn 2016) is posted here and I have also posted a research narrative offering a personal account of my career to 2011, together with a personal statement about climate change. You can find a recent (February 2019) interview with me, reflecting on my career pathway, from undergraduate geography student at Durham in the late 1970s to professor of geography at Cambridge in the late 2010s. All my academic publications can be viewed at my ORCID page. Citations can be searched either here (Scopus: Mike Hulme) or here (Google Scholar: Mike Hulme). My ResearchGate page is here.
Artwork supplied courtesy of The Finch podcast. Last updated: 21 December 2023
