MCF Academy
The MCF Academy supports and develops the next generation of climate leaders.
Climate change is a complex challenge and solutions cannot be found in just one or two disciplines. Launched in 2022, the MCF Academy forms a diverse intellectual and interdisciplinary community, drawing from all areas across the University to promote and innovate a rich exchange of ideas.
The MCF Academy offers strategic scholarships for MCF-supported PhD students recruited in priority areas. It brings together early career researchers with seasoned academics, and provides training, networks and experience for young researchers to thrive, and themselves strive for a positive climate future.
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Members of the MCF Academy
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Adelle Mansour
Adelle is a PhD candidate in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Her PhD sits at the nexus of climate, housing and health. Adelle is investigating how citizen science approaches can be leveraged to gather housing data and generate solutions to enhance the resilience of our housing infrastructure and thereby protect the health of occupants in the face of intensifying environmental hazards.
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Adrian Ford
Dr Adrian Ford is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The University of Melbourne and is affiliated with Melbourne Climate Futures and its Academy. Adrian's research interests include community renewable energy groups and projects, and the political economy of sustainable energy transitions
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Alister Self
Alister's research focus is on the financial mechanism of the UNFCCC and how this has evolved over time. Through close study of climate negotiations his PhD develops a historical account of how and why change has occurred in this institution.
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Amelia Leavesley
Amelia is an urban sustainability scholar and PhD Candidate with the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne. Her research explores multilevel waste governance in Australia, focussing on the role of municipal governments in scaling action on waste. Her work draws on international climate governance literature to explore the networked potential of intermediate cities in domestic and international waste governance.
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Astrid Edwards
Astrid is working on a co-disciplinary PhD in the School of Culture and Communications Her PhD investigates the potential and/or perceived barriers to publishing and selling climate fiction in Australia. Behind this niche topic, however, Astrid's work focuses on a much broader question: what is the role of the Arts and Education in the Anthropocene?
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Astrid Milena Bernal R.
Astrid's PhD explores the pathways to promote private investment towards energy transition through the analysis of the legal framework associated with corporate duties of disclosure and care in Australia and the United States. Her work aims to contribute to the understanding and stregthening risk factors associated with climate change for ambitious, nature- and rights-respecting effective climate action.
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Ceren Ayas
Ceren's research focuses on the role of resource-based conflicts in spurring a just transition away from coal.
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Changlong Wang
Chang specialises in large-scale energy system transition optimisation, and renewable electricity export modelling in the forms of direct electricity, hydrogen and energy-embodied products such as green steel.
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Clare Walter
Clare's research focuses on closing the gap between research and policy related to the health and environmental impacts of air pollution in Australia. She is currently investigating the implications of continued car-centric city design and urban design practices to children's respiratory health (asthma) and examining policy responses.
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Dinh Huynh
Dinh is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. His research looks at the trans-disciplinary interactions between science, policy and practice in sustainable development, with the case study of flood management in the delta city of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.
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Elisabeth Vogel
Dr. Elisabeth Vogel is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the UNSW Water Research Centre and an Honorary Research Fellow at Melbourne Climate Futures. Her research focuses on past and future changes in climate and hydrological extremes and downstream impacts, such as on food production and water resources, with a particular focus on the impacts of compound events. In her research, Elisabeth uses novel statistical and machine learning techniques to translate hydro-climate data into impacts information.
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Ellycia Harrould-Kolieb
Ellycia is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research sits at the intersection of global environmental governance and international environmental law. Ellycia’s broader research interests focus on the governance of the ocean and climate and their intersection. Her research explores the architectures of governance, including treaty regimes and international organisations, and their interactions, along with the roles that scientific knowledge and knowledge frames play in governance.
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Felix Brown
Felix is passionate about all things energy and ensuring the energy transition is equitable. His work encompasses the household-level changes we're seeing with the installation of solar PV and battery energy storage systems, and transport electrification across public and private fleets.
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Gang Tang
Gang’s research focuses on coupling C-N cycles for the reduced complexity climate model MAGICC. In his PhD, he will build a module interlinked with MAGICC’s carbon cycle module that can represent the main N-modulated feedbacks and CO2 fertilisation as well as N fertilisation effects and N limitation characteristics. He will calibrate the new model structure/parameters accordingly. Gang has experience in dissolved organic matter biogeochemistry.
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Josephine Boateng
Josephine is a geographer from Ghana with a Master of Sustainability Studies from UNU in Japan, where she also worked at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES). She is studying the effects on women's reproductive rights of climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.
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Kelvin Say
Kelvin researches the decarbonisation and operational opportunities for end-users in a transitioning electricity market. He evaluates the potential of decentralised energy resources to create new market segments, operational roles, and business models.
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Lauren Nishimura
Dr Lauren Nishimura is a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow at Melbourne Law School. Lauren’s work focuses on climate change, international law, human rights, and migration. Her research explores how international obligations can contribute to efforts to adapt to climate change and reduce climate-related risks to people, including through anticipatory measures that account for human mobility.
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Lena Schlegel
Lena´s research is situated at the interface of global environmental governance, societal transformation and environmental ethics. In her PhD she explores the connections between human-nature relations and climate response, focussing on bushfire-affected communities in Victoria.
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Lisa Restel
Lisa’s research focuses on household-scale solar electricity generation and battery energy storage systems. She investigates the effects that economic boundary conditions have on the operation of behind-the-meter assets.
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Malte Meinshausen
Professor Malte Meinshausen's research works on climate change scenarios, remaining carbon budgets, NDCs and the reduced-complexity climate model, MAGICC. He is a lead author on the IPCC Working Group I and Synthesis reports.
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Nabreesa Murphy
Nabreesa's PhD explores how the increasingly complex disaster landscape of the Pacific affects the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of Pacific youth. She hopes to highlight the impacts of disasters on existing SRHR inequities, and the importance of applying a justice lens to disaster risk reduction and governance. She aims to identify opportunities for meaningful youth engagement in disaster risk reduction, to strengthen youth leadership and inform inclusive strategies that address the needs of young people.
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Oliver Miltenberger
Oliver researches the design and implementation of economic and policy instruments for climate change. He uses natural and managed landscapes as case studies. This work supports development of carbon market guidance.
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Peter Rayner
Prof Rayner's main research activities focus on the estimation of surface sources and sinks of CO2. He uses satellite and in-situ measurements with models to quantify and understand the patterns and mechanisms of CO2 release and uptake with a focus on the tropics and Southern Hemisphere.
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Phoebe Quinn
Phoebe's PhD explores possibilities for scaling up deliberative processes in community decision-making around climate change, disaster risk reduction and recovery. Through mixed-methods action research, Phoebe is investigating the integration of Polis within community decision-making processes in Australia relating to climate change and/or disasters. Phoebe's work includes research into disaster resilience, community wellbeing and social justice, and knowledge translation activities including the development of strengths-based resources relating to disasters and climate change.
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Pia Treichel
Pia’s PhD research focuses on international climate finance for adaptation via the Green Climate Fund and the justice implications therein. Pia’s teaching and research activities focus on adaptation in practice, climate justice, and how to ensure the inclusion of the most vulnerable.
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Rebekkah Markey-Towler
Bek researches the intersections between financial, corporate and climate law, as well as the role of climate litigation. Specifically, her PhD examines the regulation of climate change impacts to banks’ mortgage portfolios.
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Ryan Schoenbaum
Ryan’s research aims to advance conservation and spatial-planning methods to account for processes that connect terrestrial and marine ecosystems in the context of climate change. His PhD project in the Burdekin region promotes the resilience of the Great Barrier Reef by integrating multiple objectives (water quality, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration) into a spatial optimisation framework.
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Simon Batterbury
Simon Batterbury is the MCF Academic Convenor. Simon has taught environmental studies and geography at the University of Melbourne since 2004. He was previously a Professor & Chair of Political Ecology at Lancaster University, UK, working in the large Lancaster Environment Centre. His research has been on adaptation to drought and land degradation in dryland West Africa, sustainable livelihoods in West Africa and Timor Leste, and Indigenous responses to mining in New Caledonia-Kanaky. Editor of the Journal of Political Ecology for 20 years and an advocate for academic-led OA publishing, he has edited 600+ journal articles and assisted publication by many early-career scholars.
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Sophie Robinson
Sophie’s research sits at the interface of climate change, health, social-ecological systems and governance. Her PhD explores the role of governance in the climate-resilient development of healthcare systems and seeks to identify particular governance structures, mechanisms and attributes that enhance adaptive and transformative capacities of healthcare systems and enables climate-resilient development.
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Steven Myburgh
Steven’s research surrounds the spread and management of an invasive grass species under climate change on pastoral properties across the Northern Australian savannas. Modelling incorporates interaction with fire regime, and impacts on carbon storage, biodiversity and landholder income are being assessed.
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Thea Shields
Thea Shields is a Juris Doctor candidate at Melbourne Law School and Research Assistant at Melbourne Climate Futures. She is particularly interested in strategic climate litigation and corporate climate risk. Thea is involved in research activities ranging from international climate litigation to First Nations energy policy development.
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Theo Mendez
Theo researches the impacts of clean energy transitions and climate change on international relations. His PhD project utilises Game theory and non-traditional security concepts to analyse the impacts of clean hydrogen and critical minerals on the future of the Australia-South Korea relationship.
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William Hopkinson
William is a PhD candidate in the School of Social and Political Sciences. His research focusses on comparative climate change politics. Merging theoretical perspectives from sustainable transitions and comparative politics, William analyses the drivers and structural conditions for states' climate ambition under the UNFCCC.
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Win Chanvitt
Win's research conducts scenario analysis of demand response (DR) to the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM). With the increase of flexible demand, his simulation will provide for better-informed decisions by policy makers and indicate whether the integration of demand-response programs is more economical than the addition of new generation and network capacity builds, as well as whether the scheme can complement existing energy storage systems to some degree.
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Xinyang Fan
Xinyang's research focuses on quantifying the impact of climate change and variability on the groundwater in Australia and Germany.
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Zebedee Nicholls
Zeb's research focuses on the global warming implications of past and future emissions. Alongside Malte Meinshausen and Jared Lewis he developed the MAGICC reduced complexity climate model. MAGICC is a world-leading tool for determining whether changes in emissions of different species (including CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and aerosol precursors) are sufficient to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement or not.
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Zoe Nay
Zoe specialises in climate change law and the law of the sea, with a focus on issues of climate change adaptation and loss and damage in the Pacific region. Her doctoral research examines legal issues related to state responsibility for loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change in Pacific small island developing states.