Karen O'Brien

Karen is an action researcher whose work focuses on the human and social dimensions of environmental change, particularly climate change. She is committed to understanding and engaging with equitable transformations to a thriving world. She promotes integrative approaches to sustainability that recognize how beliefs, values, worldviews, and paradigms influence systems change and social change.

Karen is currently researching how to scale transformative change, and she loves exploring the potential for quantum social change in theory and practice. Karen’s recent books include You Matter More Than You Think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World and Climate and Society: Transforming the Future (with Robin Leichenko). She is currently co-chair of the International Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) transformative change assessment. In 2021 she was co-recipient of the BBVA Foundation's Frontiers of Knowledge Award for Climate Change.