Maxwell T. Boykoff

Research Interests

Maxwell Boykoff is the Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, which is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. He also is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies program and is Adjunct faculty in the Geography Department. In addition, Max is a Senior Visiting Research Associate in the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from the University of California-Santa Cruz and Bachelor of Sciences in Psychology from The Ohio State University.

Max has ongoing interests in cultural politics and environmental governance, science and environmental communications, science-policy interactions, political economy and the environment, and climate adaptation He has experience working in North America, Central America, South Asia, Oceania and Europe, and is a co-author and editor of seven books and edited volumes, along with over fifty articles and book chapters. 

Max’s research and creative work has developed primarily in two arenas:

1. cultural politics of science, climate change and environmental issues = this refers to ways that attitudes, intentions, beliefs and behaviors of individuals and groups shape (and are shaped by) the perceived spectrum of possible action in the context of science-policy, climate change and environmental issues.
2. transformations of carbon-based economies and societies (with emphasis on the interface of science and practical action) = this refers to decarbonization politics, policies and decision-making, with particular interest in how these activities find meaning in people’s everyday lives, as well as how they, in turn, feed back into science-policy decision-making.

Max integrates these research and creative works with ongoing commitments to mentorship, teaching and service. He supervises postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students through the International Collective on Environment, Culture and Politics. See Max’s ‘current/former students’ page for more about their research and current positions. 

Max was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. He is proud to be a Badger.

Max Boykoff's research has concentrated on interactions between state and non-state actors at the interface of environmental science, policy and practice. He has been working in two primary research areas:

1. cultural politics of science, climate change and environmental issues = this refers to ways that attitudes, intentions, beliefs and behaviors of individuals and groups shape (and are shaped by) the perceived spectrum of possible action in the context of science-policy, climate change and environmental issues.
2. transformations of carbon-based economies and societies (with emphasis on the interface of science and practical action) = this refers to decarbonization politics, policies and decision-making, with particular interest in how these activities find meaning in people’s everyday lives, as well as how they, in turn, feed back into science-policy decision-making.

As a few examples of his research in ‘cultural politics and climate change’:

1. His most recent book is called Creative (Climate) Communications: Productive Pathways for Science, Policy and Society(released July 2019) with Cambridge University Press. Conversations about climate change at the science-policy interface and in our lives have been stuck for some time. This handbook integrates lessons from the social sciences and humanities to more effectively make connections through issues, people, and things that everyday citizens care about. Readers will come away with an enhanced understanding that there is no 'silver bullet' to communications about climate change; instead, a 'silver buckshot' approach is needed, where strategies effectively reach different audiences in different contexts. This tactic can then significantly improve efforts that seek meaningful, substantive, and sustained responses to contemporary climate challenges. It can also help to effectively recapture a common or middle ground on climate change in the public arena. Readers will come away with ideas on how to harness creativity to better understand what kinds of communications work where, when, why, and under what conditions in the twenty-first century.
2. His 2011 book is called Who Speaks for Climate? Making sense of media reporting on climate change (released November 2011), with Cambridge University Press. This book works to make sense of how media representations of climate change influence the spectrum of possible responses to modern climate challenges. It is motivated by conditions in this 21st century where people rely more than ever upon media representations to help interpret and make sense of the many complexities relating to climate science and governance. Media representations – from news to entertainment – are powerful and important links between people’s everyday realities and experiences, and the ways in which these are discussed at a distance between science, policy and public actors. A dynamic mix of influences – from internal workings of mass media such as journalistic norms, institutional values and practices, to external political economic, cultural, and social factors – shape what becomes climate ‘news’ or ‘information’. Amid these spaces of meaning-making reside questions regarding who – through media visibility – translates climate science and governance, as well as how.  
3. Max Boykoff and the MeCCO team monitors 96 sources (across newspapers, radio and TV) in 43 countries in seven different regions around the world. The MeCCO team then assembles the data by accessing archives through the Lexis Nexis, Proquest and Factiva databases via the University of Colorado libraries. To view the latest graph see 2004-2019 World Newspaper Coverage of Climate Change or Global Warming (updated monthly). Country level profiles have now expanded to include datasets and figures for Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, International Wire Services, Europe, Latin America, Radio, and US Television.

For two examples of his research on the ‘transformations of carbon-based economies and societies’:

1. Max co-authored a 2010 Global Environmental Change article with Dr. David Frame (University of Oxford) and Dr. Sam Randalls (University College London). This article interrogated the institutionalization of the discourse of "climate stabilization" over the last three decades. Taking a historical perspective, they argue that while this discourse has been valuable in making climate science legible and useful to governance in the past, it is now limiting wider considerations for alternative mitigation efforts, through premature foreclosure around fixed international policies.
2. He has increasingly worked on issues of climate adaptation and urban environments in the Indian context. With Dr. Emily Boyd (University of Reading), he has examined adaptation strategies associated with flood events in Mumbai, India. Such work links with some of Max’s past research that examined vulnerability and livelihood issues in relation to global climate change and extreme events in Honduras.

Current Courses

• ENVS 1000 Introduction to Environmental Studies
• ENVS 2100 Political Economy and the Environment
• ENVS 3100 Inside the Greenhouse
• ENVS 3173/THTR 4173 Creative Climate Communications
• ENVS/GEOG 3022 Climate Change Politics & Policy
• ENVS 4800 Culture, Politics and Climate Change
• ENVS/GEOG 5100 Climate Politics & Science-Policy
• ENVS 5720 The Problem Orientation
• ENVS 5909 Doing Political Ecology
• FYSM 1000 Science & Environmental Communication

Additional Readings

Books

Creative (Climate) Communications
by Maxwell T. Boykoff

July 2019

Culture, Politics and Climate Change
Edited by Deserai A. Crow and Maxwell T. Boykoff

March 2014

Successful Adaptation to Climate Change
Edited by Susanne Moser and Maxwell Boykoff

Routledge
May 2013

The New Carbon Economy: Constitution, Governance, and Contestation
Edited by Peter Newell, Maxwell Boykoff, and Emily Boyd

Wiley-Blackwell
January 2012

 

Who Speaks for Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change
by Maxwell Boykoff

Cambridge University Press
September 2011

The Politics of Climate Change: A Survey
Edited by Maxwell Boykoff
November 2009

Contentious Geographies: Environmental Knowledge, Meaning, Scale 
Edited by Michael K. Goodman, Maxwell T. Boykoff, and Kyle T. Evered
May 2008