We are a small core team of interdisciplinary experts from public health, economics, political science, global governance and environmental science. Members include the Laureate Fellow, two Laureate Research Fellows, two PhD students and part-time research assistants. The Senior Project Officer manages the activities of the Hothouse.

Sharon Friel
Sharon Friel is an ARC Laureate Fellow, Professor of Health Equity and Director of ARCHE | Australian Research Centre for Health Equity at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australian National University. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia, and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Nick Frank
Nicholas Frank is a Laureate Research Fellow with the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse in the School of Regulation and Global Governance. Prior to this, he was an Associate Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. Nicholas specializes in the political economy of trade and investment governance. He employs formal theory, econometrics, inferential network approaches, and text-as-data techniques in his research.

Megan Arthur
Megan Arthur is a Laureate Research Fellow with the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse. She is an interdisciplinary qualitative researcher working at the intersection of social policy and public health. She studies the politics of governance for health and wellbeing at multiple levels, with a particular interest in the social and environmental determinants of health equity, and how these are mediated by political, economic, cultural, and commercial environments.

Giorgia Dalla Libera Marchiori
Giorgia is a Laureate PhD candidate at the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse. Her thesis will focus on the role of philanthropy in shaping planetary health equity research agendas. Originally trained as a biomedical scientist, Giorgia worked in various youth-driven non-profit organisations focused on sustainability including the Buy Better Food campaign in ICLEI and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.

Roxana-Claudia Tompea
Roxana is an experienced political scientist with a passion for sustainable development. Her focus areas include Circular Economy, resource efficiency, the EU Single Market for Green Products, product life-cycle and Environmental Footprint.

Jocelyn Cutler
Our Senior Project Officer, Joss has a background in International Development and Environmental Science, she brings experience of Grants Administration and Project Co-ordination in the Public Sector and Not-For-Profits to the Hothouse.

Amy Carrad
Amy is our Communications Officer, and is also a Research Officer within the ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), working on the NHMRC Ideas Project ‘Evaluating Systems Change for Health Equity: A Case Study of Australia’s COVID-19 Policy Response’, and a member of the Menzies Centre for Health Governance. Her research interests include governance for healthy, sustainable, and equitable food systems, including the roles of both those traditionally understood as being responsible for governing (e.g., governments), and others (e.g., civil society actors). She is also interested in wellbeing economies and the ways these alternatives could contribute to planetary health equity.
The Hothouse Advisory Board comprises world renowned academics with expertise in public health, climate science and health, social systems science, economics and political studies, and key change makers in government, international organisations, business, civil society and the media. The Board will help strengthen the expertise of the Laureate team; translate the evidence generated into policy and action in Australia and internationally, and provide the Laureate Research Fellows and PhDs opportunities to build their leadership in collaborative publications, grant development and knowledge mobilization. The confirmed Advisory Board members (as of July 2022) are:

Chee Yoke Ling

David Schlosberg
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He is known internationally for his work in environmental politics, environmental movements, and political theory - in particular the intersection of the three with his work on environmental and climate justice. His other theoretical interests are in food justice and multispecies justice, climate adaptation and resilience, and environmental movements and the practices of everyday life - what he terms sustainable materialism.

Fran Baum
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From 2009-2021 she was a Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor and Director of the Southgate Institute for Health, Society and Equity at Flinders University and received an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for her public health service.
Fran is an activist academic who advocates for a fairer, more sustainable and healthy world.

Ian Dunlop
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He is an independent advisor on climate change and energy, a Director of Australia 21, and a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development.
Previously, Ian has worked in oil, gas and coal exploration and production, and in scenario and long-term energy planning. He was a senior executive of Royal Dutch Shell for many years and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He has chaired the Australian Coal Associations and the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading which developed the first emissions trading system design for Australia.

Jennifer Clapp
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Prof. Clapp has published widely on the global governance of problems that arise at the intersection of the global economy, food security and food systems, and the natural environment.

Paul Barclay
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Paul has produced countless stories over more than 25 years for an array of programs on virtually all ABC radio networks.

Roland Sapsford
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This work has ranged from being involved in New Zealand’s first study of the impacts of carbon taxes and work on energy efficiency and home insulation policy, through to getting solar panels installed on a local community centre and campaigning against major road projects.
Roland once completed four years of a medical degree and was a senior manager in public health for five years. He has also studied economics and systems ecology to postgraduate level, and has a strong commitment to Indigenous rights.

Sandro Demaio
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Dr Demaio co-hosts the ABC television show Ask the Doctor – an innovative and exploratory factual medical series broadcasting across Australia and around the world.

Sophie Lewis
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Previously, she was climate scientist at the University of NSW Canberra. She was also a lead author on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, which are used worldwide to develop policies around climate change.
Dr Lewis was named 2019 ACT Scientist of the Year in recognition of her research, particularly on weather extremes and how climate change contributes to events such as bushfires and droughts. In 2015 she was presented with the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS) Early Career Researcher Award for her work in climate science.
The Planetary Health Equity Future Leader Fellows are PhD and early career researchers from around the world. In September 2023, the first cohort of Future Leaders gathered in Canberra to participate in a structured program of workshops and masterclasses over a fortnight.
Find out more here.


Maja Arsic
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Maja is a 2017 John Monash Scholar with a background in plant nutrition (PhD University of Copenhagen/University of South Australia), environmental chemistry, and agricultural policy issues. She is a member of the FAO LEAP Circular Bioeconomy Approaches Technical Advisory Group for sustainable livestock systems.

Megan Arthur
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Prior to joining ANU, Megan’s doctoral research in the Global Health Policy Unit at the University of Edinburgh investigated the governance practices and dynamics of power within philanthropic foundations’ engagement in governance for nutrition at the national level in India.

Sarah Boddington
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Sarah has over 20 years of work experience in the process of social change, in Australia and internationally, including for DFAT/AusAID and NGOs. This includes roles as the Head of the Australian Aid Program in Nepal, Director of the Governance Advisory Section in DFAT, and Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor in Cambodia.

Amy Carrad
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Prior to joining RegNet, Amy was Project Manager and Primary Research Assistant on a project exploring the role of Australian local governments and civil society organisations in food system governance. She was the lead research assistant on a large systematic literature review on nutrition labelling policy for the WHO’s Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group. Amy is passionate about food systems - she is a member of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance and their Peoples’ Food Plan working group, Young Farmers Connect’s secretary and a member of their strategic working group, the ACT Food Advisory Panel convened by Regional Development Australia ACT, and the Right to Food Coalition.

Giorgia Dalla Libera Marchiori
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Originally trained as a biomedical scientist, Giorgia worked in various youth-driven non-profit organisations focused on sustainability including the Buy Better Food campaign in ICLEI and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.

Babet de Groot
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Babet was a Global Voices National Scholar and the Australian Delegate for Climate, Sustainability, and Energy for the Y20 in 2021, the Youth Engagement Group to the Group of 20.

Nick Frank
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Prior to the Laureate Research Fellowship, he was an Associate Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. Before joining ANU, he worked at the WTO and ICTSD on a variety of trade and development topics including trade negotiations, regional integration, value chain upgrading, trade and gender, and services sector development.

Carlos Alberto Faerron Guzmán
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He previously undertook research to document indigenous Borucan traditional knowledge and cultural perspectives in Costa Rica.

Hridesh Gajurel
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He wrote a book on the ideational and institutional roots of cross-country differences in corporate governance and firm-level distributional outcomes. His interests include applying his understanding of the interactions of market structures, institutions, and ideas in the corporate context and from a comparative perspective to issues of planetary health equity.

Charlotte Godziewski
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Charlotte earned her PhD in 2020 from the University of Sheffield, in the Department of Politics and International Relations. She is a coordinator of the UACES-funded research network on EU Health Governance, a member of the City Political Economy Research Centre and the Institute for the Study of European Laws.

Chelsea Hunnisett
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She has previously held positions at The George Institute for Global Health, the Climate Action Network and the Planetary Health Alliance. Chelsea has conducted research in planetary health policy, wellbeing economies and food ethics. Chelsea holds a Bachelor of Communications Journalism and Philosophy and an Honours Degree in Philosophy from Deakin University.

Edward Jegasothy
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He completed his PhD in 2020, which explored environmental justice in NSW in relation to air pollution, ambient temperature and heatwaves.

Francis Nona
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As a Torres Strait Islander man, he has personal lived experience of living and working with both urban and remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia. Francis is passionate about decolonising research and making legitimate and protected space for Indigenous Knowledges that can better address health inequities experienced by First Nations peoples in Australia and around the world. His academic path has been developed recently with strong outputs for community engagement and an emerging academic track record, particularly regarding climate change impacts on health in the Torres Strait.

Damilola Oluwemimo
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Damilola is a member of the Planetary Health Alliance and is currently the Program lead at the Oath for Sustainability Network, a non-profit that contributes to the solution of the ongoing planetary health crises through an interdisciplinary perspective by coordinating information through webinars, advocacy, campaigns, and training.
Sandra Samantela
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For over five years, she has provided technical assistance to municipalities in formulating their local development plans and climate and disaster risk assessment studies. She holds a Masters in Urban Management and Development in the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. In 2020, she was a Local Pathways Fellows of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network Youth.

Alex San Martim Portes
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Alex is an interdisciplinary researcher who studies international political economy, intellectual property rights, trade law, climate change, public health, sustainability, and mixed-methods research. He is interested in how trade agreements affect developing countries' capacity to design public policy and how emerging forms of domestic regulation affect international trade.

Kate Sievert
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She also holds a Bachelor of Arts (Philosophy) and a Master of Public Health from Monash University. Kate has worked in research areas including understanding the politics and political economy of the global food system and examining the role of power and influence in policymaking in ultra-processed foods and infant formula in Australia and on a global level. She is President and Co-founder of the advocacy organisation, Healthy Food Systems Australia. Kate has worked in policy writing, including developing and drafting position statements, policy briefs and technical papers for the World Health Organization in Geneva and the Public Health Association of Australia.

Annabelle Workman
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Belle's research investigated the role of health co-benefits in the development of climate change mitigation policies. She developed case studies for Australia, the European Union, China and the United States of America, identifying barriers and opportunities to enhance the political traction of health in mitigation policy development.
Visitors Program
There are two categories of visitors to the Hothouse, Distinguished Visitors and Visiting Fellow. For more information about the Hothouse Visitor Program, please read the Visitor Program guidelines.
Distinguished Visitors are invited visitors to the Hothouse. The Distinguished Visitor program aims to promote collaboration with international and national level stakeholders from policy, advocacy, and ethical businesses.

Katherine Trebeck
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She sits on a range of boards and advisory groups such as the C40 Centre for Urban Climate Policy and Economy, and the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity. She instigated the group of Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo) – comprising Scotland, New Zealand, Finland, Wales, Iceland, and Canada.
Visiting Fellows can be academic and non-academic. Visiting Fellows may undertake work that involves: collaborating with Hothouse researchers; a discrete project related to our expertise and interest; or self-directed research visits to support components of an academic program (such as a research project of a master's degree) or independent projects.

James Hasler-Bail
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James is interested in planetary health equity, climate change, the commercial
determinants of health, the gut microbiome, medical anthropology, and
the first 1000 days of life.

Charlotte Godziewski
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Charlotte earned her PhD in 2020 from the University of Sheffield, in the Department of Politics and International Relations. She is a coordinator of the UACES-funded research network on EU Health Governance, a member of the City Political Economy Research Centre and the Institute for the Study of European Laws.
Academic staff, PhD and masters students from across the ANU and other universities in Australia and internationally are invited to join the Hothouse as Associate Fellows. Through collaboration in specific projects, participation in research workshops or attendance at seminars and roundtables, this wider Hothouse community is an opportunity to leverage and expand our collective understanding and knowledge translation.

Alan Gamlen
Alan Gamlen is a RegNet Professor. Alan’s book, Human Geopolitics: States, Emigrants and the Rise of Diaspora Institutions (Oxford University Press 2019), won the 2020 Distinguished Book Award for Best Book on Ethnicity and Migration from the International Studies Association.

Aparna Lal
Dr Aparna Lal is Fellow in the Environment, Climate and Health group at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. Her research focuses on how the physical environment impacts human health and well-being. My projects combine public health surveillance with remote sensing, and land and water quality monitoring data to quantify, monitor and understand the processes that shape disease patterns.

Arnagretta Hunter
Dr Hunter is the Human Futures Fellow in the College of Health and Medicine and is a physician and cardiologist with a clinical focus on patient-centred care. Her research interests are in health impacts of the changing climate. She is a Member of the Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solutions, and is the co-host of The Crawford School of Public Policy podcast Policy Forum Pod.

Ashley Schram
Ashley Schram is a Braithwaite Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) and Deputy Director of the Menzies Centre for Health Governance. Her research investigates the actors, structures, and ideas governing public policies that stratify society and shape key systems for human health and health inequities. Focal areas include international trade, investment policy, and food systems.

Bec Colvin
Bec Colvin is a social scientist and senior lecturer with the Resources, Environment & Development Group at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy. Bec researches the social and political dimensions of contentious issues associated with climate policy and energy transition. Her research is focused on understanding the complexity of how different people and groups engage with social, policy, and political conflict about climate and energy issues, particularly through the theoretical lens of the social identity approach. She has explored conflict about wind energy, coal seam gas, coal, and climate policy and energy transition more broadly, in settings ranging from the public sphere through to local communities.

Beck Pearse
Beck Pearse is a sociologist at the ANU School of Sociology and the Fenner School of Environment & Society. Her teaching and research focuses on inequalities and environmental policy. Beck is interested in how people from different walks of life experience environmental change and how environmental policy can contribute to building a fair and ecologically abundant world.

Belinda Townsend
Dr Belinda Townsend is Deputy Director of the Menzies Centre for Health Governance and Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. Bel is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the interface between public health, governance, and political economy and is an emerging leader in the field of public health political science.

Christian Downie
Christian Downie is an Associate Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. He holds an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship and was previously a Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of New South Wales. Christian’s research focuses on the governance of the energy transition. His latest book is Business Battles in the U.S. Energy Sector: Lessons for a clean energy transition.

Darren Halpin
Darren is Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean (Research) in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He is a political scientist who researches and writes about organised interests (interest groups, thinks tanks, corporations and lobbyists) and political representation, and the connections between the two.

Hannah Lord
Hannah joined the ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance as a PhD candidate in late 2021. Prior to starting her research, Hannah spent a decade with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) working on international climate change policy and as a diplomat in Laos. Drawing on these experiences, Hannah’s research focuses on the politics and governance of energy systems transition in Southeast Asia.

Hilary Bambrick
Professor Hilary Bambrick is Director of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. Her research interests are in the health impacts of climate change: how we limit and manage them, such as through early warning, community-led adaptation, and systems resilience.

Jensen Sass
Jensen Sass is a Braithwaite Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), a political sociologist by training he works on problems within contemporary democratic governance, including the regulation of private power and questions around the quality of public discourse.

Lee White
Dr Lee White is a Research Fellow with the Zero Carbon Energy in the Asia Pacific Grand Challenge program. Her research relates to understanding how systems can be changed to increase clean technology adoption, including understanding policy needs to support a just energy transition. She has published in areas including drivers of residential solar adoption, predictors of intent to adopt electric vehicles, and household response to demand management rates to shift timing of electricity use.

Libby Salmon
Libby is a PhD candidate who joined RegNet in 2016 to research regulatory regimes affecting women’s food production for infants and young children through breastfeeding.
Her research will investigate the contribution of human milk sharing to infant food security and health policy in Australia, under the supervision of Julie Smith and Sharon Friel.

Mark Howden
Professor Mark Howden is Director of the Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions at The Australian National University. He is also a Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and is Chair of the ACT Climate Change Council. Mark works on climate variability, climate change, innovation and adoption issues via both research and science-policy roles. Issues he has addressed include agriculture and food security, the natural resource base, ecosystems and biodiversity, energy, water and urban systems.

Nikolai Drahos
Nikolai is a PhD candidate at the ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Nikolai previously worked as a policy advisor at the Australian Climate Change Authority and as an energy economist at the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources.

Sara Bice
Associate Professor Sara Bice is Foundation Director, Institute for Infrastructure in Society at the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University. She is Vice Chancellor’s Futures Scheme Senior Fellow for her work on The Next Generation Engagement program, Australia’s largest study into community engagement in infrastructure, to date.

Sotiris Vardoulakis
Sotiris Vardoulakis is Professor of Global Environmental Health at the ANU National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. He is the Director of the NHMRC Healthy Environments and Lives (HEAL) National Research Network. His main research interests include climate change and health, air pollution and health, sustainable cities, sustainable transport, exposure assessment, epidemiology, health impact assessment, and environmental public health communication and policy.

Susan Sell
Susan K. Sell is a RegNet Professor. Her research focuses on the politics of intellectual property, trade, investment and private power. She has published a number of books, including Private Power, Public Law: the Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights; and Who Governs the Globe?

Will Grant
Will Grant is Associate Professor in Science Communication at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at ANU. Awarded for his public policy and outreach work, Will’s work has focused mostly on the interaction of science, politics and technology. He is co-founder of the researcher employment service PostAc.
Will is regularly heard on Radio National discussing science for Research Filter and Nightlife, as well as podcasting in The Wholesome Show and G’day Sausages, charting in the Australian iTunes top 50.
Enquiries
Please direct general enquiries to: hothouse@anu.edu.au or call the Senior Project Officer on (+61 2) 6125 3948
Twitter: @PHEhothouse
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