Svenja is a Lecturer in Human Geography in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Her research engages with the geographical political and cultural economies of climate change adaptation and related challenges including disaster resilience and energy transitions. She is particularly interested in the way government, business and expertise interact to shape policy choices and create new frontiers for investment and innovation. These interactions are evident in a wide range of situations including the climate services industry, new carbon and climate risk disclosure regimes, climate finance pathways and green financial instruments, smart city technologies and environmental analytics. Svenja draws on both qualitative and quantitative social science methodologies, with a focus on spatial processes and inequalities.

Svenja joins Monash University from the University of Melbourne, where she completed her doctoral research at the School of Geography investigating the emergence and influence of climate consulting on adaptation governance. She has also held postdoctoral positions at the Australian-Germany Energy Transition Hub with a joint University of Melbourne-RMIT project analysing governance, equity and privacy issues associated with the deployment of smart metering technology, and at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute where she worked with Professor Lars Coenen and collaborated with Resilient Melbourne to investigate the role of the private sector in building urban resilience. She has partnered with the Lloyds Register Foundation and Arup on The Resilience Shift to investigate policy tools for embedding resilience in critical infrastructure, and the University of Melbourne and the Victorian Government on developing long term objectives for climate adaptation.

Svenja also has over a decade’s professional experience in government and consulting in Australia and abroad. She has advised the public and private sectors extensively in environmental policy, management and approvals; sustainability strategies and rating tools; corporate sustainability and ethical investing; as well as climate change and energy efficiency. Her professional experience spans diverse sectors including property development, energy generation/distribution (including renewables), transportation infrastructure, catchment management and urban water systems, community services and social housing, the banking and financial sector, mining and others.

APG5122 Corporate Sustainability

ENS5020 Perspectives on Sustainability

Climate consulting in Australia and internationally

Climate science and advisory services

Climate finance and experiments in green finance

Carbon and climate risk assessment and disclosure

Climate analytics and information justice

Business and climate change / disaster resilience