University of Melbourne Events Calendar

Hear from University of Melbourne researchers about how they are contributing to helping build resilience and preparedness for climate change in both Australia and the Pacific Islands, and the scope for collective action to ensure all people in the region are better prepared for climate change.

This event is the first lecture of the Science at Melbourne Lecture Series for 2025.

The Science at Melbourne Lecture Series is the premier public event series from the Faculty of Science. The event program seeks to share our knowledge and love of science with the wider community, engaging them in current research and empowering them to ask questions and act for a better world. The series runs throughout the year covering scientific research, discoveries, and theories that play exciting or unexpected roles in shaping and advancing our society.

This event is part of the Melbourne Climate Futures seminar series, which spotlights interdisciplinary research on climate change taking place within the University of Melbourne and beyond.

Social-movement activism on climate change has expanded dramatically in recent years. Yet, much recent political science work on climate change has downplayed the climate movement’s influence, arguing that industrial actors are the prime-movers of climate politics.

So, can the climate movement shape climate politics? And if so, how? 

Drawing on a mixed-methods study of campaigns to end new licences for oil and gas exploration and production in the UK and Norway, this presentation will argue that a consequential way in which climate-movement actors can influence politics is by “climatising” issues not previously framed through a climate lens, turning those issues into salient items on the political agenda.

Prima facie evidence of the impact of this agenda-shift on the positions of other political actors in each country, including mainstream political parties, will also be presented.