Supervisors: A/Prof Lisa Alexander (l.alexander@unsw.edu.au), Prof Katrin Meissner (k.meissner@unsw.edu.au), Prof Pauline Grosjean (p.grosjean@unsw.edu.au)
Location: UNSW
Extreme climatic events affect society in many ways from impacts on agriculture (e.g. crop yields and losses) to health (e.g. ambulance callouts, hospitalisations, and suicide rates). But can they also affect how people vote in elections? For example, is there a connection between climate extremes and whether people vote for extreme political parties? This project will investigate these questions using France as a case study with methods that are common in epidemiology and economics. The student will create a climatology of heatwaves and droughts across France and use this to investigate connections with voting patterns since the Second World War. The ultimate goal would be to help project voting patterns in the future and to see whether the techniques could be applied more widely to other countries.
Requirements: Outstanding analytical skills and a familiarity with either R, Python or Matlab are necessary.