Dr Laurence Wainwright
Dr Laurence Wainwright is a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College and a member of the Sustainability Working Group. He is Senior Departmental Lecturer in the School of Geography and the Environment, Senior Researcher in the Department of Psychiatry, and Course Director of the MSc in Sustainability, Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. Laurence has been researching, lecturing, and supervising at universities across Australia, Sweden, the United States, and United Kingdom since 2010.
Laurence’s research interests and teaching areas are multidisciplinary and diverse. They include corporate sustainability, psychiatry, and the mental health impacts of climate change. Laurence has published in journals including the British Medical Journal Mental Health, the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Evidence Based Mental Health, and Environmental Governance and Policy. In 2026 he was a named collaborator and team author on a major antidepressant trial, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Laurence has served as an Associate Editor for the BMJ Mental Health as well as serving as a reviewer for a number of other medical and environmental journals. He is an external examiner at several leading British universities, and has been a grant reviewer for the Swedish Energy Agency.
Dr Wainwright has extensive media experience providing expert opinion on a broad range of topics– particularly the intersection of environment and health. Between 2021 and 2026, he has featured in over 700 media articles, including BBC World News television, CNN, PBS Newshour, New Scientist, the Financial Times and The Guardian.
In 2024, Laurence received a University of Oxford Teaching Excellence Award for his ‘approach to creating an atmosphere where students can thrive..resulting in exceptional levels of group cohesion and camaraderie’. In 2022, Laurence was the recipient of a University of Oxford Excellence Award. Additionally, he was a nominee for the Vice Chancellor’s Staff Sustainability Award in 2022.
Prior to commencing his academic career, Dr Wainwright trained as an accountant and worked briefly in the banking industry in Australia. He has also spent time in the volunteer not-for-profit sector, where he worked with individuals experiencing homelessness and recovering from addiction to find employment.
Outside of work, Laurence enjoys fishing, reading and hiking. He has a pet tortoise named Charlotta, and a vivarium with five frogs that are known to croak loudly in the background of important Zoom calls.
