Dr Laurence Wainwright
Senior Departmental Lecturer and Course Director, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment; Senior Researcher, Department of Psychiatry
Dr Laurence Wainwright is a Senior Departmental Lecturer and Course Director of the MSc in Sustainability, Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University. A teaching and learning oriented academic, Dr Wainwright has 15 years experience in lecturing, facilitation and supervision across universities in Australia, Sweden, the United States and United Kingdom. He has received numerous prizes and citations for his teaching, as well as appearing on lists recognising high scores in student feedback surveys. Dr Wainwright's research interests and teaching areas are multidisciplinary and diverse, primarily focusing on corporate sustainability, psychiatry and the health impacts of climate change. In addition to his role in the Smith School, Dr Wainwright is a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College and a Senior Researcher in the Department of Psychiatry. Dr Wainwright has extensive media experience providing expert opinion on a broad range of sustainability issues – particularly the intersection of environment and health.
Academic profile
About
Dr Laurence Wainwright is a Senior Departmental Lecturer and Course Director of the MSc in Sustainability, Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University. A teaching and learning oriented academic, Dr Wainwright has over 15 years experience in lecturing, facilitation and supervision across universities in Australia, Sweden, the United States and United Kingdom. He has received numerous prizes and citations for his teaching, as well as appearing on lists recognising high scores in student feedback surveys.
Dr Wainwright's research interests and teaching areas are multidisciplinary and diverse, primarily focusing on corporate sustainability, psychiatry, and the health impacts of climate change. In addition to his role in the Smith School, Dr Wainwright is a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College and a Senior Researcher in the Department of Psychiatry.
Dr Wainwright has extensive media experience providing expert opinion on a broad range of sustainability issues – particularly the intersection of environment and health. Between 2021 and 2026, he has featured in over 700 media articles. In 2022, his contributions were featured in over 200 outlets, including BBC World News television, CNN, PBS Newshour, New Scientist, the Financial Times and The Guardian.
In 2024, Dr Wainwright received a University of Oxford Teaching Excellence Award for his 'approach to creating an atmosphere where students can thrive, resulting in exceptional levels of group cohesion and camaraderie'. In 2022, Dr Wainwright was also the recipient of a University of Oxford Excellence Award. Additionally, he was a nominee for the Vice Chancellor’s Staff Sustainability Award in 2022.
Dr Wainwright has served as an Associate Editor for the British Medical Journal – Mental Health, as well as serving as a reviewer for a number of other medical and environmental journals. He is an external examiner at several leading British universities, and has been a grant reviewer for the Swedish Energy Agency.
Expertise
- Health and environment
- Mental health and weather
- Mental health and heat
- Mental health
- Psychiatry
- Heatwaves
- Extreme heat
- Heat and medications
- Climate change
- Climate change and mental health
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Bipolar Disorder
- Psychiatric medications
Selected publications
- A Decision-Support System to Personalize Antidepressant Treatment in Major Depressive Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial (2026)
- Mental health research for a world in climate crisis (2026)
- Written evidence submitted by Dr Laurence Wainwright (EAC Call for Evidence on Heat Resilience and Sustainable Cooling)
- Corporate Sustainability: Managing Responsible Business in a Globalised World (2023)
- Vitruvian plot: a visualisation tool for multiple outcomes in network meta-analysis (2022)
- Underutilised augmentation strategies for mood disorders (2020)
Media experience
Dr Laurence Wainwright has extensive media experience providing expert opinion on a broad range of sustainability issues – particularly the intersection of environment and health. Between 2021 and 2026 he has featured in over 700 media articles. In 2022, his contributions were featured in over 200 outlets, including BBC World News television, CNN, PBS Newshour, New Scientist, the Financial Times and The Guardian.
Recent media work
- Australians set to sizzle this Australia Day weekend as experts warn medications increase heat risks (7News Australia, 2026)
- Seasonal affective disorder - or SAD - isn't just 'winter blues' (Sky News, 2025)
- 6 ways a heatwave can seriously impact your mental health (Women's Health, 2025)
- How to buy sustainable salmon: an expert guide to navigating the nuance of eco‑labels (The Conversation, 2024)
- From the sea to your plate: how to choose more sustainable salmon (The Guardian, 2024)
- Overwhelmed by heat? The culprit may be in your medicine cabinet (CNN, 2024)
- ‘We’re in serious trouble’: Why a hotter world will be bad for our health (The Guardian, 2023)
- Hot and Bothered (ABC Australia, 2023)
- Trees could cut urban heatwave mortality by a third: Study (The Straits Times, 2023)
- Almost 8,000 US shootings attributed to unseasonable heat – study (The Guardian, 2022)