Dr. Lucy Atkinson is an Associate Professor in the School of Advertising & PR in the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research looks at communication in the context of sustainability and the environment. She focuses on the ways message components (like visual elements, argument frames, source factors) in environmental communication influence environmental attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. Past and current projects have explored stakeholder acceptance of carbon capture and storage projects, investigated public hesitancy regarding new health technologies, and tested new communication technologies including augmented reality and virtual reality to communicate about poorly understood scientific phenomena like the Deep Seas. She has been PI or co-PI on grants totaling more than $8M from government and industry sources. These grants support research exploring stakeholder communication around sustainability and climate change issues. Current grants include $7M (as co-PI) from the NSF to explore environmental justice and resilience in underserved communities and $100K (as PI) from the City of Austin to examine multilingual AI-assisted emergency preparedness among underserved communities.

Her work has appeared in top-ranked flagship journals, like the Journal of Advertising, Health Communication, Environmental Communication, Science Communication and New Media & Society. Her research has been covered in international and national news media, including the Guardian (UK) newspaper, the CBC Radio show Ideas, and National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition and On Point with Tom Ashbrook. In addition to her research, she also serves as Associate Director of the UT-Austin Global Sustainability Leadership Institute, which trains students to be leaders around issues of environmental communication, responsible innovation, and corporate sustainability. She is also a senior fellow with the Texas Immersive Institute and a senior faculty research affiliate with the Center for Media Engagement, both in the Moody College of Communication.