My research is interdisciplinary, focusing on the social science dimensions of climate variability and climate change. My work explores risk perception, risk communication and public engagement with climate change; and the implications of these areas for policy and practice.
I use diverse methodologies, depending on the research questions I set out to answer. I have published research using survey, interview, focus group, expert elicitation, photo-elicitation and Q methods; and content, frame and critical visual analysis.
I am lead/co-lead investigator for the following projects (see drop-down menu for details):
- 2026-2028: ESRC: ‘Getting the picture: Changing the heatwave visual discourse in the news media’. See the project description on the ESRC website, and our heatwave visuals in the news media project website.
- 2023-ongoing: C3DS (Centre for Climate Communication and Data Science, funded by philanthropy and the University of Exeter. You can read more about our C3DS research projects, team and ethos at the C3DS centre website.
- 2021-23: Leverhulme Research Fellowship: ‘The visual life of climate change’. The main output of this Fellowship was a sole-authored book, written for both academics and practitioners. You can read more, and watch a short film about the book, on the Leverhulme Trust’s website.
- 2020-21: Norwegian Environment Agency, Special Issue on Climate Change Communication. The Climatic Change special issue, including our article introducing the collection, are free to read here.
- 2019-21: ESRC Impact Accelerator Account: ‘Picturing climate change: media training for human editors and machine algorithms’. This workshop led Climate Visuals to update their guidelines on visual image use for climate communications.
- 2013-2015: Exeter University HASS funded project ‘Media and the cultural politics of climate change: tracking the coverage of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report’. This was written up into a Nature Climate Change article. This was part of a Focus Issue set of articles and commentary in the journal, titled ‘IPCC and media coverage of climate reports’, where Saffron acted as a guest editor alongside the Nature editors.
- 2012-2017: ESRC Future Research Leader Fellowship ‘Visualising Climate Change’. The project summary for this Fellowship is available at the ESRC’s website. Journal articles from this work included the paper Image Matters and On the use of images for climate engagement.
I am/have been a co-investigator on the following projects:
- 2021-2026: ESRC ACCESS network (Advancing Capacity for Climate and Environment Social Science). Co-Director and lead for the ACCESS Leadership College.
- 2015-15: ESRC Urgent funded project ‘The 2013/14 Winter Floods and Policy Change’. See Winter Floods Project Website for more details.
Policy and practice
My research has contributed to the development of public policy. I have contributed to research about community safety concerning bushfire risk (including a report for the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission); and in defining and assessing maladaptation in the water sector. I have also contributed to public engagement with climate change activities beyond academia, with past projects including a silver medal-winning garden for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, ‘The 2050 Garden’. I work with many different media organisations as part of my research into public engagement with climate change, especially around the use of visual communication. This has involved Getty Images, the World Press Photo Foundation, Climate Visuals, Open Planet, Climate News Tracker, major national news organisations, and many others.
