Professor Briony McDonagh

Prof. Briony McDonagh is Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Hull and UK national lead for the COAST-R Network Plus, funded by the UKRI and DEFRA under the Resilient Coastal Communities and Seas Programme.

COAST-R is a national network of academics, UK marine, coastal and government agencies, industry partners, local authorities, voluntary sector and communities most affected by coastal change. Together, they are working to build knowledge, action and resilience for UK coastal communities and seas.

Briony's disciplinary background is in human geography and environmental history, and her current work uses place-based, creative and participatory approaches to build water and climate action. Much of her work is undertaken in partnership with communities experiencing increasing flood risks and/or coastal transition. She is PI of the AHRC-funded Risky Cities project, learning from the past to build climate awareness and flood resilience today and for the future. She is also Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Water Cultures, whose PGRs are pioneering new, humanities-led, interdisciplinary and transhistorical research area – the ‘green-blue humanities’ – to transform our understanding of humanity's relationships with water in the green-blue regions of the world, past, present and future.

Her book, Elite Women and the Agricultural Landscape, 1700–1830 (Routledge, 2017), won the Joan Thirsk Memorial Prize and Women’s History Network Book Prize. She is co-editor of Women and the Land, 1500-1900 (Boydell & Brewer, 2019), Remembering Protest in Britain since 1500 (Palgrave, 2018) and Hull: Culture, History, Place (Liverpool University Press, 2017). She is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Royal Historical Society and Higher Education Academy, and was 2018-2019 President of the British Science Association’s Geography Section.

She has served in a range of university leadership roles, including as Director of the University of Hull's Doctoral College (2020-2023) and Director of the University's Energy and Environment Institute (2022-2024).