Social scientists named among winners of prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prizes
Two academics from the Social Sciences Division are among those to have been awarded this year's Philip Leverhulme Prizes: Professor Federica Genovese (Department of Politics and International Relations) for her work on the international politics and political economy of climate change, and Professor Louise Slater (School of Geography and the Environment) for her work on floods, droughts, and climate impacts.
Professor Federica Genovese is one among the first political scientists to advocate for a bottom-up understanding of the conflict that societies are experiencing around climate mitigation and adaptation policies. Her research encompasses various levels of political action, combining the study of international climate negotiations with mapping local level attitudes among the public and also companies. Professor Genovese will use the prize money to investigate the politics of geolocated firms exposed to costly climate policy adoption and climate change-induced asset erosion. This will include detailed research into how firms that are exposed to these risks mobilize for or against climate policy, collecting data from various European countries as well as emerging economies.
She said: 'I am beyond honoured to win the Philip Leverhulme Prize. I thank my mentors, co-authors, colleagues, and family for encouraging me to freely and ambitiously explore research questions I am passionate about, and the Trust for choosing me and my work this year.'
Professor Louise Slater, whose prize was for her work on floods, droughts, and climate impacts.
Professor Slater leads the Hydro-Climate Extremes research group, which develops innovative computational approaches to detect and predict the impacts of changes in climate and land cover on water and weather extremes. Her primary areas of study include flooding, droughts, extreme heat events, and heavy rainfall. She intends to use the prize money to recruit a postdoctoral researcher dedicated to developing new causal and explainable artificial intelligence methods for analysing extreme water and weather events. By collaborating with experts in machine learning, her aim is to construct large-scale models that leverage observational data to assess the impact of warming and land cover changes on heavy rainfall.
She said: ‘Receiving the Philip Leverhulme Prize is an exciting acknowledgment of the incredible students, early career researchers, and collaborators that I have had the privilege of working with. I am genuinely optimistic about how artificial intelligence and machine learning can help us better understand and prepare for some of the impacts of the climate crisis, such as heavy rainfall, extreme heat, and flooding.’
Awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, Philip Leverhulme Prizes recognise the achievement of outstanding research scholars whose future career is exceptionally promising, and whose work has made original and significant contributions to knowledge as well as shown sustained international impact.
Only 30 prizes are awarded throughout the UK each year, with the 2024 prizes covering the following subject areas: Classics, Earth Sciences, Physics, Politics and International Relations, Psychology, Visual and Performing Arts. Each prize winner receives £100,000 which can be used for any purpose related to the advancement of their research. The University of Oxford was the only institution this year to have four award winners.
Read the full story: Four Oxford researchers win prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prizes
