Dr. Sophie Day is a Senior Research Associate and member of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. She is presently seconded to North Norfolk District Council where she provides strategic support to Coastwise (Home | Coastwise) - part of the Defra and Environment Agency funded Coastal Transition Accelerator Programme. Coastwise is a new North Norfolk initiative to transition and prepare coastal communities where the coast is eroding. She leads on evaluation and learning, and strategic communications and engagement for the project.

For over twenty years, Sophie has carried out interdisciplinary research on adaptation to coastal change in the UK and abroad, and related projects looking at sustainable futures for coastal regions. Through her applied work with coastal communities and coastal managers over many years, Sophie has a strong expertise in advancing the practice of adaptive coastal governance: understanding better how we go about collectively managing the interplay between people, policy and practice to design deliverable pathways toward resilient coastal futures. Her 2022 piece in The Conversation is here: Coastal erosion is unstoppable – so how do we live with it?

In 2024 Sophie won a UEA innovation award for her most recent work with North Norfolk District Council: Coastwise: the North Norfolk Coastal Transition Accelerator Programme.

Background:

Sophie began her research career in the Tyndall Centre in 2000, and completed her PhD at UEA where she analysed the impact of visual communication on public engagement with climate change. She then worked on many climate change adaptation projects and led the stakeholder engagement strand for the Tyndall's Sustainable Coasts theme. Later, she co-edited a book, which drew together more than 10 years of research on the Tyndall Coastal Simulator (Nicholls, Dawson and Day, 2015 – ‘Broad Scale Coastal Simulation’). Sophie has bid for and delivered a number of academic innovation (e.g. 2018_Blue_Futures_summary_report.pdf) and consultancy projects (including a lot of work on the internationally recognised Bacton to Walcott Sandscaping Scheme), and worked for some time as a Senior Consultant for Atkins Ltd.’s Environmental Futures team.