Professor Michael Mason

Professor Michael Mason is Professor of Environmental Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment and an Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and Environment. He is also Palestine Programme Director at the Middle East Centre, where he served as Centre Director from 2018 to 2025.

He is interested in ecological politics and governance as applied to questions of accountability, security and sovereignty. This research addresses both global environmental politics and regional environmental change in Western Asia/the Middle East.

Alongside articles in a wide range of academic journals, he is the author of Environmental Democracy (1999) and The New Accountability: Environmental Responsibility across Borders (2005). He is also co-editor of (with Amit Mor) Renewable Energy in the Middle East (2009), (with Aarti Gupta) Transparency in Global Environmental Governance (2014), (with Muna Dajani and Munir Fakher Eldin) The Untold Story of the Golan Heights (2023), and (with Aisha Al-Sarihi) Climate Policy and Politics in the Middle East (2025).

Expertise

environmental policy; environmental security; climate change; water infrastructure; Lebanon; Iraq; Israel/Palestine