Personal statement

Lesley Henderson is Professor of Communications at the University of Strathclyde. She completed her PhD in the Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Glasgow and has held research and teaching posts at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Brunel University London where she also founded and led the Sustainable Plastics Research group (SPlasH). Lesley has an extensive track record in externally funded research which explores the interlinked areas of science, public health, and environmental communications. She is an expert in leading interdisciplinary challenge focused research on public perceptions of (micro)plastics and behavioural change with current projects in Indonesia, UK, Spain and Germany (NERC/GCRF/UKRI/European Space Agency (total 4.5 million GBP). She has published widely on communicating science and risk and is author/lead editor of  Communicating Plastics Pollution: Making of an Environmental Crisis (forthcoming, Routledge); Media Analysis and Public Health: Contemporary Issues in Critical Public Health (Routledge); Television news, Politics and Young People: Generation Disconnected? (Palgrave Macmillan) and Social issues in Television Fiction (Edinburgh University Press).

Lesley contributed to international policy on marine litter, plastics pollution and microplastics for the EU, DEFRA, UN and was a member of the SAPEA working group on microplastics and Rapporteur for Social and Behavioural Sciences Perspectives on Communicating Microplastics (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities). She is member of the peer review college, European Science Foundation, UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab and panel member for strategic UKRI and Science Foundation Ireland programme calls (EPSRC, NERC) and has been invited to provide independent scientific advice for industry and business.