Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere

Robert Cox (PhD, University of Pittsburgh) is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His principal research areas are environmental and climate change communication, and strategic studies of social movements. One of the nation’s leading scholars in environmental communication, Cox is coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication (2015), as well as authoring numerous studies of environmental and climate change campaigns. He has served three times as President of the Sierra Club, the largest grassroots U.S. environmental organization, and is also on the Board of Directors for Earth Echo International whose mission is “to empower youth to take action that restores and protects our water planet.” Cox continues to advise environmental groups on their communication programs, and serves as an advisory editor for the journal, Environmental Communication. Cox regularly participates in environmental and climate change initiatives and has campaigned with former Vice President Al Gore, singer Melissa Etheridge, and other public figures. He also enjoys hiking and trekking in the Himalayas and the southern Appalachian Mountains in the U.S.