Skip to main content
Reuben College

Dr Emma Lawrance

Senior Research Fellow in Climate Change and Mental Health, Department of Psychiatry

Dr Emma Lawrance is a leading researcher at the intersection of climate change and mental health. Her work spans the psychological toll of extreme weather (including heat) and environmental loss, the rise of eco-anxiety and climate distress (particularly among young people), and the mental health co-benefits of climate action. 

Send me an email [email protected] Connect with me on LinkedIn
Head and shoulders image of Dr Emma Lawrance for Find an Expert

Academic profiles

Reuben College

Oxford Climate Research Network

About

Dr Emma Lawrance is a Senior Research Fellow in Climate Change and Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford and leads Climate Cares, which brings together researchers, clinicians, policymakers and people with lived experience to study how a changing climate affects mental health and wellbeing. She also leads the Wellcome funded project Connecting Climate Minds.

Dr Lawrance holds a DPhil in Neuroscience from the University of Oxford. Her work spans the psychological toll of extreme weather (including heat) and environmental loss, the rise of eco-anxiety and climate distress (particularly among young people), and the mental health co-benefits of climate action. Through initiatives like Connecting Climate Minds, a global effort to align research, policy and lived experience on this issue, she has helped establish climate-mental health as a distinct and urgent field of study.

She has led youth engagement projects around the world, including in the UK, US, Caribbean, Australia and the Philippines, to understand how the climate crisis shapes young people's mental health and what kinds of support genuinely help. Her central argument: climate change acts as a 'risk multiplier' for mental health difficulties, while climate action can serve as an 'opportunity multiplier' for better wellbeing, at individual and community levels alike.

Dr Lawrance regularly advises policymakers and speaks internationally, including WHO, World Economic Forum, UNFCCC COP conferences, OECD and others, on how health systems, governments and communities can respond to the mental health dimensions of the climate crisis. 

She is available to speak with journalists on the intersection of climate change and mental health topics including how climate impacts like heat affect mental health, eco-anxiety, youth mental health, climate adaptation and wellbeing, and the design of mental health-informed climate policy.
 

Expertise

  • Climate change and mental health
  • Climate anxiety/eco-anxiety
  • Heat and mental health
  • Climate action and mental health
  • Climate psychology

Selected publications

Media experience

Dr Emma Lawrance has experience working with print and online media including BBC News, Time Magazine, The Times, New Scientist, The Guardian, Die Zeit, Reuters and The Straits Times. She has also worked extensively with broadcast media including television and radio outlets such as Al Jazeera, Sky News, Radio 5 Live, BBC World Service, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and BBC News. Dr Lawrance has worked on podcasts such as Reasons to be Cheerfull and Planet Pod.

Recent media work

Blogs

Videos


Interview with Emma Lawrance - CHRA 2025