Professor Emily Boyd appointed new director of the Beijer Institute

Professor Emily Boyd has been appointed the next director of the Beijer Institute, taking over from current director Carl Folke upon his retirement on 1 September 2025.

Emily Boyd is Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University, currently based at the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS) – an internationally recognised centre for research, teaching, and societal impact, which she led as Director for the past seven years. She has also served as Director of the Lund University Sustainability Forum and currently co-directs the university’s Profile Area for Nature-Based Future Solutions, a strategic initiative for scientific excellence.

Emily is the new Editor-in-Chief of Global Sustainability, and serves on the scientific board of the Beijer Institute, the scientific committee of the Volvo Environment Prize, and the advisory board of the Center for Climate Resilience at the University of Augsburg.

She is a leading social scientist with a background in international development, environmental governance, and climate change. Her expertise spans climate mitigation, adaptation, resilience, and loss and damage. She is a contributing author to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (Working Group II), as well as to IPBES and UNEP.

As co-Director of CLIMES, the VR Centre of Excellence, her current research focuses on extreme climate event attribution and climate storylines, with particular attention to their implications for justice and national policy. Her work has been supported by major funders including ESRC, NERC, Leverhulme, VR, Formas, the Belmont Forum, and the EU.

Emily collaborates widely across disciplines, including the natural sciences and the arts, and actively engages beyond academia. She is committed to fostering global research partnerships, with long-standing collaborations across Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Europe.