Sarah Whatmore

Professorial Fellow
Professor of Environment and Public Policy
Head of Social Sciences Division

From the dreaming spires of Oxford to the sodden North Yorkshire moors, Professor Sarah Whatmore’s pioneering research encompasses both, resulting in research collaborations with communities living with flooding, and generating new approaches to flood management.

Much of her work focuses on the human impact on the natural world. In 2007, she led a large research project with collaborators from Newcastle and Durham Universities to devise a way of tackling the devastating floods in picturesque Pickering, in North Yorkshire. Combining local knowledge and academic acumen, they slowed the flow by demonstrating that upstream storage could work. Their research has helped persuade reluctant farmers and governmental bodies that working with nature, not against it, was the way forward, and it has gained national acclaim and international attention.

Her success in public engagement led to her appointment to DEFRA’s Science and Advisory Council 2015–19 and as Chair of its Social Science Expert Group. In 2015 she was appointed the University’s first Academic Champion for Public Engagement with Research.

Widely published and regarded by many as a force of nature herself, she is an elected Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Geographical Society, and is a member of the Council of the British Academy. She studied Geography at UCL, where she also gained an MPhil in Town Planning and a PhD. She has lectured at Leeds, Bristol and Open Universities before joining Oxford in 2004 to take up a Statutory Chair in Environment and Public Policy. She has served as Keble’s sub-Warden and as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education for the University, and is now Head the Social Sciences Division.