Rebecca Willis is a Professor in Energy and Climate Governance at Lancaster Environment Centre, where she leads the Climate Citizens research group. She holds a UKRI Fellowship and is Co-Investigator at the Energy Demand Research Centre and Production and Consumption Transformations (PACT), as well as the JUST Centre. She is an adviser to Innovate UK’s Net Zero Living Initiative and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). In 2019-2020, she was an Expert Lead to Climate Assembly UK, the first national Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change, established by six parliamentary select committees in the House of Commons. She features on the Woman’s Hour Our Planet Power List. Her book, Too Hot To Handle? The democratic challenge of climate change was published by Bristol University Press in March 2020.
Previously, she was a research fellow project at the University of Exeter, investigating energy governance. From 2011-15 she was a Council Member of the Natural Environment Research Council, and was Vice-Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, advising the Prime Minister and First Ministers of the devolved administrations, from 2004-2011. In 2009 Rebecca founded Green Alliance’s Climate Leadership Programme, an initiative to support Members of the UK Parliament, and earlier served as Green Alliance’s Director.