top of page
My Work
Author
My first book, THE HIGH SEAS: AMBITION, POWER AND GREED ON THE UNCLAIMED OCEAN, will be released in May 2024 in the UK/Commonwealth and North America. Written as a part-travelogue, it explores our relationship with the half of our planet that is ocean belonging to no-one. In 2020, I received a Giles St Aubyn award for first works of non-fiction from the Royal Society of Literature in the UK for THE HIGH SEAS. Follow me on social media, or sign up for updates on forthcoming book talks and events.
Journalist
I’ve been covering climate change and oceans as a journalist and editor for the past twenty years, first as chief editor of The Marine Scientist magazine. I spent five years as an editor with Nature in London. During my time at Nature, I launched the website Nature Reports Climate Change and the blog Climate Feedback, which was part of the Guardian Environment Network. I was also the founding chief editor of the research journal Nature Climate Change. Now freelance, I mostly write features and occasional commentary for international publications.
.jpg)
Speaker
Over the past 15 years, I have been honoured to speak at world-class research centres and meetings across Europe, the US and Asia, such as at NASA in New York and the UN City in Copenhagen. I have also been delighted to host panel discussions and one-to-one conversations among leaders in the fields of sustainable business, ocean policy and climate change. If you’d like me to give a talk or host a conversation, reach out at olive@oliveheffernan.com.
Academic
I began my career as a fisheries scientist in the UK researching overexploited cod stocks in the Northeast Atlantic. While I now work primarily as a journalist, I still dip my toe in academia. In 2019, I created a course on Communicating Climate Change as part of the MA in Science Writing Programme at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins as an adjunct lecturer, I taught science communication and the critical evaluation of science at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland during a two-year Science Writer Residency in 2017 and 2018.
bottom of page