As many in the University community have probably heard, Professor David Schlosberg has resigned as Director of the Sydney Environment Institute and left the University of Sydney after 15 years of service. SEI collaborators, partners, and friends held a beautiful send-off for David in May.

In his first year at the University in 2011, with support from the Research Portfolio, Professor Schlosberg co-founded the multi-faculty Sydney Network on Climate Change and Society. Two years later, with Professor Iain McCalman, the Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) was founded, which Professor Schlosberg has co-directed and directed for the last 12 years. SEI quickly developed a global reputation for excellence and originality in its social science and humanities-based engagement with core issues of climate impacts, biodiversity loss, resilience and adaptation, as well as its world-leading work in environmental, climate, and multispecies justice. SEI’s approach and collaborative method has since been emulated by numerous other universities.

Professor Schlosberg was also a key leader in the development of the University of Sydney’s first sustainability strategy and the design of the Office of Sustainability in 2020. He has been an active member of the University’s Sustainability Program Control Board since its inception, and has been an advocate for both sustainability education and using University research to inform our own institutional sustainability practice.

In its inaugural year in 2018, Professor Schlosberg was awarded the University’s Ruby Payne-Scott Professorial Distinction for excellence in research, teaching, collaborative leadership, mentoring, engagement, and commitment to university values; he is the only Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences scholar to be awarded that distinction. Professor Schlosberg also won the FASS Research Impact Award in 2022 for his work co-founding FoodLab Sydney, a small business incubator that supports food entrepreneurs, primarily those from migrant backgrounds. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia in 2019.

In his time at the University, Professor Schlosberg has become one of the world’s top cited scholars of environmental politics; his framework for understanding environmental justice, which encompasses equity, recognition, participation, and capabilities, has been used to evaluate thousands of cases of environmental and climate injustice globally. With Professor Dany Celermajer and others affiliated with SEI, Professor Schlosberg also helped establish the concept and field of multispecies justice.

In addition to academic impact and accolades, this work has had a global impact on public policy and governance: most recently, Professor Schlosberg’s environmental justice scholarship has been used to frame the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) definition of just adaptation and the OECD’s analysis of justice in environmental policy. Professor Schlosberg’s work has also been widely cited in policy documents of numerous agencies of the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the European Union, and multiple national governments including Canada, Germany, South Korea, US, and UK.

In Australia, Professor Schlosberg’s more applied work has had a keen impact on resilience and adaptation policy and practice. He led a deliberative community engagement during the development the City of Sydney’s adaptation policy, conducted community-based research on the impacts of shock climate events for Resilient Sydney, led crucial research on the impacts of disasters on community resilience and organising across NSW, and has served on both the WSROC Heat Smart City Taskforce and the Committee for Sydney’s Resilience Advisory Committee. He has worked with Australian governments, NGOs, thinktanks, and industry on issues of justice in environmental policy.

In September Professor Schlosberg will join the University of Helsinki as part of a €50 million program of the Finnish Research Council to recruit high-level researchers to take up Professorships and establish research teams in Finland. The position as Professor of Environmental Politics is aimed at strengthening the research quality and profile of the University of Helsinki, in particular around the intersection of diversity, resilience, justice, and climate solutions. Professor Schlosberg will expand his work on theories and examples of just and democratic responses to the climate crisis.

The University of Sydney and the Research Portfolio thank Professor Schlosberg for his 15 years of dedicated service to the University and wishes him the best for his next chapter.