Speakers

Andrew King is an Associate Professor in Climate Science at the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Melbourne and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century. Andrew is interested in climate change projections under the Paris Agreement and net zero emissions pathways, understanding the effect of the rate of global warming on regional climates, and seasonal prediction of climate extremes. He completed his PhD in Climate Science in 2015 at UNSW and since then has worked at the University of Melbourne. Andrew is a former ARC DECRA Fellow and will start an ARC Future Fellowship in mid-2025.

Kate is the Senior Physical Risk and Resilience Advisor at the Investor Group on Climate Change. She is responsible for uplifting investor understanding and action on physical risk, advocating for effective adaptation policy, and supporting opportunities for private investment in resilience. She is also a member of the NESP Climate Systems Hub Steering Committee.

Previously, Kate worked in the insurance sector as a Senior Climate Analyst for WTW. She led the development of their Australia and New Zealand climate change strategy and built their first physical climate risk models, covering bushfire, flood, and cyclone.

Kate has a Bachelor of Science (Advanced) from the University of Sydney, a First Class Honours in Climate Science from the University of New South Wales and is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Melbourne.

Of Ngāpuhi, Lebanese, and Pākehā heritage, Dr. Parsons’ is a historical geographer whose research adopts transdisciplinary and decolonising approaches to examine how Indigenous communities understand and respond to intersecting processes of social and environmental changes. The majority of her research and teaching focuses on bringing a decolonial lens to theories, policies, and practices surrounding climate change adaptation and environmental governance and management, and the Indigenous environmental justice. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland, the co-editor-in-chief of Climate Risk Management and associate editor of Nature: Humanities and Social Science Communications, and the contributing author to two chapters (Small Islands and Climate Resilience Development Pathways) of the IPCC WGII Sixth Assessment Report. Her current research projects include: 1) examining how different individuals, iwi/hapū (tribes/sub-tribes), communities, and institutions in Aotearoa imagine and/or enact climate justice through the policies and on-the-ground actions; 2) co-designing art activities to raise climate adaptation awareness; 3) exploring the role of Indigenous knowledge systems in responding to climate change and environmental degradation in Aotearoa, Vanuatu, and Fiji; 4) investigating ways that communities can remember and/or restore lost or destroyed landscapes and waterscapes.

Tia is a human geographer with research interests in climate change adaptation, and monitoring and evaluation.

She is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, working with the National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Climate Systems Hub. Tia’s research takes a pragmatic approach to understanding climate change adaptation in Australia, working with government stakeholders and adaptation practitioners to design tangible knowledge outputs. Through the Enabling Best Practice Adaptation project Tia has been exploring factors which enable best practice and how these can be promoted. The project has also been collecting examples of climate change adaptation across Australia and developing an adaptation database to inform the planning and decision making of adaptation practitioners.

In previous roles Tia has worked in impact evaluation for non-profit organisations and in international disaster response with the Australian Red Cross. Tia has also conducted research analysing the distribution and inequality of urban greening in greater Melbourne.