Dr Sally Brown BSc MRes PhD
Visiting Senior Research Fellow
Dr Sally Brown is a visitor within Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering at the University of Southampton. She works at the Environment Agency. Her career has had four distinct phases:
Research: From 2008-2020, Sally was a researcher specialising in coastal change and climate change adaptation. Her research hinged around physical and social interactions in the coastal zone, particularly integrating research across disciplines. Her interests included coastal geomorphology, the impacts of sea-level rise on a range of settings and climate change adaptation at local to global scales, and shoreline management. Sally has published, researched or visited coasts around Europe and Africa coasts, plus Bangladesh, China, Ghana, India, Maldives and Vanuatu. Having supervised five PhD students, in 2022, Sally was awarded the UK Council for Graduate Education's Recognised Research Supervisor status. She was a lead author in the IPCC’s Special Report on the impacts of a 1.5ºC rise in temperature in 2018.
Impact: Throughout her research, Sally has undertaken numerous public engagement, written many blogs and media opportunities. From 2017-2018, she undertook a placement at the National Trust analysing land and properties coastal change and land subject to flood and erosional risk. From 2018-2020, she led on research impact at Bournemouth University working on coastal birds and fish for the REF’s impact case studies.
Teaching: Sally guest lectured in Southampton in coastal morphodynamics and supervised student projects. She led modules in climate change and independent research projects at Bournemouth University plus lectured in other modules. In early 2020, Sally took the lead for teaching at Bournemouth University where she was responsible for exams and assessments, additional learning support, student forums and general leadership. Having taught from Foundation Year to MSc levels, in 2022, she completed her Fellowship requirements of the Higher Education Academy. She is External Examiner for the MSc in Climate Change at the University of East Anglia.
Industry: In 2022, Sally moved to the Environment Agency where she is Principal Scientist in flood risk research. Her goal is to help to deliver the Agency’s Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management strategy in England Wales which includes rivers, surface water and coastal flood modelling, plus incident management.
