Rate My Professor Jagadish Jaishanker Thaker

Dr. Jagadish Thaker is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland, Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Holding a Ph.D. from George Mason University and an M.A., he specializes in climate change communication, public health communication, environmental communication, and corporate communication on climate change. As an affiliate researcher with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, Thaker investigates methods to understand and improve public, business, and policy engagement with climate change and public health challenges. His research has been featured in over 1000 media outlets, including The Guardian, The New York Times, and Reuters, and he has appeared on national television and radio in New Zealand.

Thaker's distinguished career encompasses prior roles as Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland and Postdoctoral Researcher at the National University of Singapore. He has garnered significant accolades, such as the 2022 Golden Anniversary Monograph Award from the National Communication Association, 2023 and 2022 Top Paper Awards in Environmental Communication from the International Communication Association, 2021 Outstanding PhD Alumnus from George Mason University’s Department of Communication, Massey Business School’s Excellence in Research award, and Top 40 under 40 inspiring teachers award from The Indian Express. His co-edited Oxford Encyclopedia of Climate Change Communication was a finalist for the 2019 PROSE Award. Key publications include Corporate Communication about Climate Change: Villains, Victims, and White Knights (Routledge, 2025), The Handbook of International Trends in Environmental Communication (Routledge, 2021), and articles in Nature Climate Change (2025, Variations in climate change belief systems across 110 geographic areas), Climatic Change, and Environmental Communication. Thaker has obtained over $1.01 million in funding as principal or co-investigator and contributed editorially as Associate Editor for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Climate Change Communication and Co-Editor for International Trends in Environmental Communication. He has served as an expert reviewer for the National Geographic Society, Canada Research Coordinating Committee, European Science Foundation, and Health Research Council New Zealand.