School of Earth and Environment

Dr Andrea Taylor

University Academic Fellow

Email address: a.l.taylor@leeds.ac.uk
Room: 9.118

Affiliation: Sustainability Research Institute

Biography

Dr Andrea Taylor is a University Academic Fellow holding joint posts at the School for Earth and Environment and Leeds University Business School. Coming from a background in cognitive psychology, her research focusses on better understanding how different groups perceive the risks posed by extreme weather, climate change and other natural hazards, and how these risks can be more effectively communicated. She is interested in applying insights and methodologies from the behavioural sciences to address communication challenges in the provision of climate and weather information services, and support decision making under uncertainty. As meetings these challenges requires cooperation across disciplines, she collaborates with experts in a range of fields including climatology, meteorology, environmental science, and risk management.

Current projects focus on improving the treatment and communication of uncertainty in climate services for China, improving the provision of weather forecast information in Africa, and understanding the factors that influence responses to severe weather warnings in the United Kingdom.

Qualifications

  • 2012 Ph.D Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making (University of Bolton, UK)
  • 2006 MSc Psychology (University of Bolton, UK)
  • 2003 BSc Psychology (Lancaster University, UK)

Memberships/Fellowships

  • Met Office Group at the University of Leeds (co-leader of the communications sub-theme)
  • High Impact Weather (HiWeather) Communications Task Group (task team member)
  • Society for Judgement and Decision Making (member)
  • European Association for Decision Making (member)
  • Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (associate)
  • Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making (associate)

Research Interests

General interests

  • Risk perception and communication
  • Decision making under uncertainty
  • User needs for climate and weather information services
  • How decision makers process and utilise probabilistic information
  • Expert elicitation

Current Projects

Improving the treatment of uncertainty for climate services in China (Role: principle Investigator; Funder: Newton Fund/Met Office Climate Science for Services Partnership China; £340,000)

African Science for Weather Information and Forecasting Techniques (African-SWIFT) (Role: co-investigator and work package leader on WP1 User Needs Co-production and Communication; Funder: Global Challenges Research Fund; £7.8m)

Developing a reference protocol for expert elicitation in health care decision making (Role: co-investigator; Funder: Medical Research Council; £369,439)

Teaching Interests

Current PhD supervision

Rachel Harcourt "What impact does media coverage of climate change and extreme weather events have on people’s likelihood of taking climate action? (co-supervised with Prof Wändi Bruine de Bruin and Prof Suraje Dessai)

Supervision interests

Andrea is interested in superivsing projects that focus on:

  • The psychology of climate risk management
  • Perception and communication of environmental risks
  • Communication of uncertainty in climate and weather information services
  • Understanding public responses to severe weather warnings
  • The role of emotion in behaviour change

Current teaching

Andrea currently contributes to teaching and supervision on the following modules

  • SOEE1390 Introduction to Business, Environment and Corporate Responsibility
  • SOEE2310 Tools and Techniques for Business
  • SOEE3030 Environmental Research Project
  • SOEE5175M Sustainability Consultancy Project
  • LUBS5285M Introduction to Research Design and Data Analysis
  • LUBS5250M Management Dissertation

Publications