Diana Liverman

Career Liverman taught geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was also affiliated with the Institute for Environmental Studies from 1984 to 1990. She moved to the University of Arizona in 1996 to become Director of Latin American Studies, retiring in 2022. She remained in this position until 2016. As of July 2019, Liverman became director of the School of Geography and Development in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona. She has served on several national and international committees including the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (chair, 1995-1999) She also chaired the scientific advisory committee of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (1998-2002) She co-chaired a transition team to create a new international research initiative, Future Earth, for an Alliance of international organizations that include ICSU, UNEP, and UNESCO.

Liverman has served as an author and committee member for multiple reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including the October 8, 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. Liverman was one of the scientists who "contributed substantially" to IPCC reports that led to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC in 2007.

She serves on the board of a number of organizations including cultural and creative sustainability experts Julie's Bicycle.

Scholarship Liverman has made many contributions to understanding of the human dimensions of global environmental change. Her publications and research grants deal with climate impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, climate change and food security, and climate policy, mitigation and justice especially in the developing world.

Liverman worked on the human impacts of drought as early as the 1980s, and the impacts of climate change on food systems using early climate modelling techniques and crop simulation models. Having identified the limitations to modelling approaches, fieldwork in Mexico followed, examining vulnerability to natural hazards in the agricultural sector, and the potential impacts of climatic change on food systems. Liverman has also examined the effects of neoliberalism on Latin American society and environmental regimes along the US-Mexico border.

In recent years she has focused on the international dimensions of climate policy and the growth of the new carbon economy, and is a frequent speaker and commentator on global climate issues. She is a co-author of influential papers on planetary boundaries and Earth system governance.

Internationally, Liverman has raised awareness of the importance of the social sciences in understanding impacts of environmental change. The Royal Geographical Society credits Liverman with "promoting the idea that climate impacts depend as much on vulnerability as the physical climate change, and especially showing how changing socioeconomic and political conditions have shifted the patterns of climate vulnerability". 2020, Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2017, Alexander & Ilse Melamid Medal, American Geographical Society 2014, Guggenheim Fellowship 2014, Presidential Achievement Award, Association of American Geographers 2011, Distinguished Scholarship Honors from the Association of American Geographers 2010, Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society 1991, Mitchell Prize for Sustainable Development,

Key publications

Books (Diana Liverman, contributing author.)

(Lead author, D. M. Liverman.)

(Multiple editions). (D. M. Liverman and others).

Articles