Julia is Professor of Societal Challenges of Climate Change, the University of Lausanne. She researches and teaches in the interdisciplinary areas of Ecological Economics and Industrial Ecology. Her research examines the connections between resource use (energy and materials, greenhouse gas emissions) and societal performance (economic activity and human wellbeing). She is interested in quantifying the current and historical linkages between resource use and socioeconomic parameters, and identifying alternative development pathways to guide the necessary transition to a low carbon society. She is the recipient of a Leverhulme Research Leadership Award for her research project “Living Well Within Limits,” investigating how universal human well-being might be achieved within planetary boundaries.

Before coming to the University of Leeds in 2011, Dr Steinberger was a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna (SEC), where she investigated sustainable cities and the links between material use and economic performance. She has held postdoctoral positions at the Universities of Lausanne and Zurich, and obtained her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has published over 38 internationally peer-reviewed articles since 2009 in journals including Nature Climate Change, Environmental Science & Technology, PLOS ONE and Environmental Research Letters.

Research Interests

Ongoing & past research projects:

• Principal Investigator on the Living Well Within Limits [LiLi] Leverhulme Research Leadership Award (website coming soon, PhDs advertised here).
• Investigator on iBUILD ESRC/EPSRC centre. Website link.
• Principal Investigator of the “Land of the MUSCos: Multi-Utility Service Companies” EPSRC project. Website link.
• Co-Investigator of the “Undermining Infrastructure” EPSRC project. Website link.