Getting the picture: changing how heatwaves look in the news
Getting the picture: changing how heatwaves look in the news
Saffron O’Neill (Project Lead): Co-Director, C3DS and Geography, University of Exeter.
Saffron O’Neill is Professor in Climate & Society in the Geography department at Exeter University. She is Co-director of C3DS and Co-Director of the ACCESS network (Advancing Capacity for Climate and Environment Social Science). Her research explores the social science dimensions of climate variability and change, particularly focusing on communication and public engagement. She has held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2021-2023) and an ESRC Future Leaders Fellowship (2012-2017). Her book, ‘The Visual Life of Climate Change‘ (Bristol University Press) was published December 2025.
Travis Coan (Project Co-Lead) Co-Director, C3DS and Politics, University of Exeter.
Travis is a Professor in Computational Social Science at the University of Exeter. He is a Director of the Centre for Climate Communication and Data Science, a member of Centre for Elections, Media, and Participation (CEMaP) and the Institute of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at Exeter, and previously directed the Exeter Q-Step Centre. While he has published on a wide range of topics, his core research develops computational approaches to explore questions in the areas of environmental and political communication.
Tristan Cann (Postdoctoral Research Fellow), C3DS and Computer Science, University of Exeter.
Tristan is a postdoctoral research fellow and computational social scientist specialising in network science (how people and objects interact) and natural language processing (how language patterns emerge at scale). His research interests consider attention and opinion dynamics and the evolution of social systems around polarised topics. Previous work has explored these trends in discussions around climate change on social media platforms and more recently has expanded to consider climate communications across the wider media ecosystem.
Sylvia Hayes (Postdoctoral Research Fellow), C3DS and Geography, University of Exeter.
Sylvia Hayes is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Climate Communication and Data Science (C3DS) at the University of Exeter. In 2024 Sylvia completed her PhD in Sustainable Futures, using a qualitative ethnographic approach to understand the way that images are used and reproduced in specialist online climate change news sites. Sylvia’s research interests are climate change communication, social media, visual imagery, photography/photojournalism, and digital media.
Claire Banwell (Project Manager) Centre Manager, C3DS, University of Exeter.
Claire is the Centre Manager for the Centre for Climate Communication and Data Science (C3DS). Claire supports the Co-Directors in developing and delivering the operational plan to achieve the vision of C3DS. Claire was previously a Research Development Manager in the EU/International Funder Cluster at Exeter. Prior to joining the University of Exeter, Claire managed a multi-centre research project on tuberculosis.
