Professor Juliet Osborne, Chair of Applied Ecology in the ESI and outgoing Director of the ESI

It is becoming increasingly clear that, in order to tackle the biggest global challenges such as the climate and environment emergency, we must adopt an interdisciplinary approach.  This means combining two or more academic disciplines to study and research a problem, and is the ethos that Professor Juliet Osborne has been advocating since she was appointed as the Director of the Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI) in 2017. 

Juliet is one of the world’s leading experts in bees and pollinators and it was this interest, combining zoology and conservation with the need for sustainable food production  which brought her to the ESI.  Since becoming Director, she has worked to open up the interdisciplinary approach, particularly with regards to how experts from different fields can not only be located together in a central place, but also that space becomes a ‘convening hub’ drawing people in to share and develop new ideas to solve problems.  The way that ESI functions has fundamentally changed the way that academics, including Juliet, are now working together. Juliet once looked at her research solely in terms of quantitative data and evidence, but now looks at it from other angles, for example by taking into account how people with different mindsets might view the data, and the power of art and storytelling in conveying a message. In the past, research areas have always been quite separate, but by locating experts in the ESI and allowing them the freedom to find the spaces between subjects and learn each other’s languages, academics of different disciplines, as well as partners from outside organisations, have been brought much closer together.  This approach really benefits research into climate change and the environment, taking a much more holistic approach to the challenge.  The way the ESI approaches problem-solving in this way has attracted attention from research councils, who are looking at the Exeter model to see how the key to finding solutions lies in encouraging a mix of people to work together in meaningful and creative ways.   

As the Director of the ESI, Juliet willingly accepted the opportunity to Chair a diverse Working Group to prepare and write the University’s Climate and Environment Emergency report, published in November 2019.  Juliet was very keen for this report to be an honest reflection of where we are as an organisation, and where we as an organisation need to step up to the challenge.  The report goes across the entire University community, incorporating academic and professional services colleagues as well as students, and emphasises the need for everybody to change both the organisation’s infrastructure and our behaviour.  In order to really make a difference, a cultural change is needed throughout the organisation, and to facilitate this, working groups are being convened in every college to address local actions.  Juliet concedes that this is a hard challenge to meet head-on, but is something that we all have to get a grip on – and now.

In addition to her idea to clone David Attenborough so that future generations can benefit directly from his insight and wisdom, Juliet believes that the solution to this challenge lies in education, particularly from an early age, so that children grow up with a natural care for the environment.  Awareness is another key area – just getting people to think about what they can do to help, and what changes we can make in our everyday lifestyles (such as buying more locally-produced food) will go a long way.  Helping people to be more carbon literate is also essential – for example by restaurants displaying the carbon cost of dishes on menus as they do with calories, so that people can make a greener choice.  As Juliet says: “people need to become more carbon literate – at present, we’re using the wrong currency.”

Juliet’s tenure as Director of the ESI comes to an end in May 2020, and Professor Jane Wills has been chosen as the new director who will take over from Juliet in May.