Michele Betsill is a Professor of Global Environmental Politics. As a scholar of global environmental governance, her resesarch contributes to understanding the role of non-state and sub-national actors and transnational forms of governance related to issues such as climate change, marine conservation, and natural resource extraction.

Current projects:

• Ocean Philanthropy Research Initiative: a multi-year research project working closely with private foundations and marine conservation practitioners. (Funded by the David & Lucile Packard Foundation and Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies)
• 100 Resilient Cities: a study of the transnational governance initiative and the intersection of resilience, climate change, and equity in member cities. (Funded by the Social Science and Humanities Resesarch Council, Canada).
• Transnational Governance and the Politics of Transformative Change at the Climate-Biodiversity Frontier: a study of transnational governance initiatives seeking to address climate change and biodiversity loss simultaneously and the  delineation of a new arena for governance intervention and political contestation.  (Funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark)

She is a founding member of the Earth System Governance research alliance and is currently associate editor of Earth System Governance. She received the 2023 Elinor Ostrom Career Achievement Award from the American Political Science Association's section on science, technology and environmental politics and the 2024 Distinguished Scholar Award from the International Studies Association's environmental studies section. 

Office hours: Wednesdays 13.30-14.30 (CSS 8.0.03)