Sukaina Bharwani

Sukaina Bharwani is an interdisciplinary senior researcher with a background in both social anthropology and computer science. This combination provides her with a unique range of qualitative and quantitative skills to further climate adaptation research in innovative ways.

Sukaina co-led the SEI Climate Services initiative and several work streams in large European and international projects. She also serves as Director of the weADAPT global platform and network for climate change adaptation. In that role she coordinates the strategic and technical development of weADAPT.

Her current research supports urban adaptation in southern Africa, connects communities working on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in Europe, and contributes to the field of climate change adaptation taxonomies and climate services. She leads research in three Horizon Europe projects:

• MAIA  (Maximising Impact and Accessibility of European Climate Research) – a project that is intended to give visibility to and connect European research.
• DIRECTED (Disaster Resilience for Extreme Climate Events providing Interoperable Data, Models, Communication and Governance Project) –  which seeks to advance SEI’s transdisciplinary knowledge co-production framework, Tandem, in “Real World Labs”.
• AGORA (A Gathering place to cO-design and co-cReate ADaptation) – a project intended to enhance inclusive citizen engagement in building a climate-resilient society.

Sukaina was a contributing author to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group II, on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

She has a Ph.D. in Applied Computing (Social Sciences) and a BA (Hons) in Social Anthropology.