Radhika Khosla

Dr Radhika Khosla is Associate Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment and Research Director of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Oxford. She is the Programme Leader in Zero Carbon Energy Use at Oxford’s ZERO Institute. 

Radhika’s research portfolio includes being Principal Investigator of the Oxford Martin School’s interdisciplinary and multi-country programme on the Future of Cooling, which examines rising extreme heat and the unprecedented increase in cooling energy demand in relation to the sustainable development goals. She is the Co-Investigator of Oxford Net Zero, an interdisciplinary research programme aimed at informing effective, equitable, and ambitious climate action, where she co-leads the workstream on inclusive and just net zero transitions.

Radhika works closely at the interface of research and policy. She is Editor-in-Chief of the high-impact peer reviewed journal, Environmental Research Letters. She has been Special Scientific Advisor to the UK’s House of Commons Environment Audit Committee for the inquiry on heat resilience and sustainable cooling (2023-24). She serves on the UK Government’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office UK-India Advisory Board. 

She has supported authorship of a number of international scientific reports and is lead author of the UNEP’s spotlight report on the first Global Cooling Watch (2023). She has also been an author of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report (2020) and the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (2022). 

An urban climatologist by training, her work seeks to advance understanding of one of the most fundamental questions of our time: how can societies improve human well-being while preserving and enhancing the natural environment? Her interdisciplinary research examines the productive tensions between energy consumption trajectories, urban transitions, and climate change governance – in the context of development – that lie at the heart of this global challenge.

Radhika has led research agendas and international knowledge networks on cooling, urban energy demand, sustainable development, and climate change policy. Using socio-technical systems analysis she examines these themes across levels of governance. Her research priorities include interrogating how, when, and why does energy use change as households urbanize and lifestyles change? What forms of governance and political rationalities characterize the varied urban responses to climate change, given their (often competing) objectives to provide urban services? Whether, and how, can emerging economies accelerate energy demand transitions? And how can we understand and equitably shape the future of global cooling demand in response to unprecedented extreme heat?

In 2023, she received an Honourable Mention for the Bina Agarwal Prize in Ecological Economics for her work on energy consumption pathways. As Research Director of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, she helps bridge research and networks on India at Oxford and international and was recognized as one of the ‘most influential people’ in UK-India relations (2019).

Radhika’s research has been covered widely in over 2,700 articles across 53 countries since 2021, including by The New York Times, The Times, The Independent, Reuters, the FT, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, CNN, Time Magazine, Times of India, The Conversation and Carbon Brief. She has appeared on podcasts and broadcast television including the Sky News Daily Climate Show, Channel 5 News (1 million+ live viewers) and DW News (47,000 views).

Radhika’s other current academic affiliation is at the University of Pennsylvania (USA). She is on the boards of various organizations, journals and book presses; and holds a range of advisory roles within and beyond Oxford. Previously, she has been a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (India), and Staff Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (USA). Radhika holds a PhD in the Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago and an undergraduate and master’s degrees in Physics from the University of Oxford.

Teaching

Spaces, Infrastructure and Technology for Net Zero, Sustainable Development, for the MSc in Enterprise and the Environment

Governance, Policy and Politics for the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance, School of Geography and the Environment

Environmental Governance and Development for the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance, School of Geography and the Environment

Climate Change Negotiations: Policy Challenge for the Master’s in Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government

Global Opportunities and Threats: Oxford Program for MBA students, Saïd Business School

Climate Change School, Oxford Climate Society, University of Oxford