David Holmes

David Holmes is Director of the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub as well as Communications Lead for the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program, Climate Systems Hub. Trained in the sociology of communications, his research explores the interrelations between media, science communication and climate change.

He is co-editor of the Edward Elgar Research Handbook in Communicating Climate Change and also conducts field research into audience views of climate change beliefs, literacy and behaviour response. Having authored the first ever chapter on the sociology of climate change in an Australian sociology textbook (Holmes D, Hughes K and Julian R, (2012) Australian Sociology: A Changing Society, David is committed to inter-disciplinary responses to climate change. David is well connected to the Australian climate science community and a National Council member of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic

Society. David was columnist for The Conversation from 2013 to 2018 with a column analysing the communication of climate change in Australia, publishing over 90 articles in that time. His articles have also appeared in SBS online, Business Spectator (The Australian), Reneweconomy, Independent Australia, and CNN.

David completed a PhD in the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne, where he was also awarded the Dwight Prize for Political Science in his Honours year. In the following decade he published three books in the sociology of communications including his international best-selling: Communication Theory: Media, Technology and Society, London, Sage, that has been translated into several languages. At the Hub, David brings together this interdisciplinary background in science studies, political science, sociology and communication scholarship in the approach it takes to climate change.