‘Adeline Talks’ and Adeline Stuart-Watt Award
The Adeline Talks and Adeline Stuart-Watt Award have been created to celebrate the legacy of Adeline Stuart-Watt, a highly respected and very sadly missed friend and colleague at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment who died tragically in April 2023.
Adeline always left a hugely positive impression personally and professionally, with a mixture of kindness, positive energy, intelligence, diplomacy and quiet confidence. She established strong, trusting, supportive and collegiate working relationships and was not afraid to ask difficult questions and to challenge ideas.
Adeline was extremely passionate about her work and was an excellent knowledge broker between academics and policymakers. During her time at the Grantham Research Institute, Adeline made particularly important contributions to our Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience programme through the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance, the Place-based Climate Action Network (PCAN) and our work on loss and damage.
The ‘Adeline Talks’ series
The ‘Adeline Talks’ will bring together senior experts and colleagues from different sectors to tackle difficult and complex climate adaptation and resilience challenges in the UK in the form of an annual roundtable. These events will continue Adeline’s legacy of asking challenging questions and developing and informing cutting-edge adaptation policy.
Topics will be selected by the Institute’s Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience team and will reflect the most pressing issues in the field of climate adaptation and resilience. The first roundtable was held in February 2025 on heat risk in the UK. A note that summarises the discussion is available here: ‘Establishing a National Heat Risk Commision – event note’.
The Adeline Talks will be invitation-only but we plan to publish synopses of their content after they have taken place.
Adeline Stuart-Watt Award
The Adeline Stuart-Watt Award will open in Spring 2025 to recognise outstanding, policy-relevant contributions to the field of climate adaptation and resilience. The award is open to female Masters student-level applicants, to champion and support the research and professional development of women who are motivated and committed to influencing climate adaptation within societies, governments and/or the private sector. This reflects Adeline’s commitment to championing under-represented groups and gender equality.
Assessed by a panel of climate adaptation experts, the award will take the form of a cash prize of £1,000 and the opportunity to co-author a high-profile policy brief and commentary to be published by the Grantham Research Institute.
More details about the award, application and selection process will be published in Spring 2025.
Selected work by Adeline for the Grantham Research Institute and PCAN
- Turning up the heat: learning from the summer 2022 heatwaves in England to inform UK policy on extreme heat
- Enabling place-based climate action in the UK: The PCAN experience
- The 2022 heatwaves: England’s response and future preparedness for heat risk
- What will it take to deliver substantive progress on Loss and Damage at COP27?
- Why adapting to climate change is becoming more urgent
- How can China contribute to climate ‘loss and damage’?
If you have any questions about the Adeline Talks or the award, please email gri@lse.ac.uk