Rupert Stuart-Smith

Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in Geography and the Environment - Degree completed in 2023

Supervisors: Professor Cameron Hepburn, Professor Friederike Otto (Imperial College London) and Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner (Climate Analytics)

Attribution science in the courts: establishing the liability of greenhouse gas emitters for climate change damages

Academic Profile

Rupert Stuart-Smith is a Research Associate in Climate Science and the Law at the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. His present research interests cover the use and interpretation of climate science evidence in litigation and methodological developments in climate change attribution science. His current work also spans climate and glacier modelling, the impacts of climate change on health and strategy development for climate litigation.

Rupert's recent publications include research on the impact of climate change on glacial retreat in Peru in the context of an ongoing lawsuit (Lliuya v RWE) and the evidence needed to bring successful legal claims on the impacts of climate change. His research has been published in leading scientific journals including Nature Geoscience and Nature Climate Change.

Rupert has authored expert reports for climate lawsuits and worked as a consultant for the Foundation for International Law for the Environment (FILE), supporting the development of FILE's legal granting strategy, and for WWF-UK, Climate Analytics and Vivid Economics. Prior to joining the Sustainable Law Programme, Rupert worked towards a DPhil and holds a BA(Hons) in Geography from the University of Oxford. Rupert has also received the Alfred Steers Prize from the Royal Geographical Society, awarded to the author of best Undergraduate dissertation in a UK geography department.

Rupert's work has been featured in the global media, including by The Guardian, BBC, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Reuters, and Carbon Brief.

Selected Publications

Journal Articles

Reports

Conference Papers

  • Stuart-Smith, R.F., Roe, G.H., Li, S. and Allen, M.R. (2019) Human influence on the retreat of Palcaraju glacier (Cordillera Blanca, Peru). American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.
Rupert Stuart-Smith
Research Clusters
Environmental Change Institute