Rate My Professor Sirkku Juhola

Sirkku Juhola is Professor of Urban Environmental Policy in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, at the University of Helsinki. She holds a PhD in International Development Studies and an MSc in Environment and Development from the University of East Anglia, as well as a BA in International Relations with Development Studies from the University of Sussex. She also serves as Adjunct Professor in Social and Public Policy at the University of Jyväskylä since 2013.

Juhola's research centers on sustainability science, environmental governance, climate policy, and climate change adaptation, particularly in cities. She leads the Urban Environmental Policy research group in the Ecosystems and Environment Research Programme, employing interdisciplinary methods to address urban sustainability challenges. Her career encompasses guest professorships at Linköping University’s Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research and Western Norway Research Institute, work at the United Nations University in Tokyo, and positions at universities in Sweden and Finland. She was deputy chief scientist of the Nordic Centre of Excellence on Adaptation Research (NORD-STAR), spent four years including two as vice-chair advising the Finnish Government on climate policy, and is a core group member of Future Earth Finland. Juhola contributed to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, led authorship for the UCCRN Third Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities, became Co-Editor-in-Chief of PLOS Climate in 2025, received the 2022 Outstanding Reviewer Award from Environmental Research Letters, and was awarded a Research Council of Finland grant in 2025. With 151 research outputs, notable publications include “Redefining maladaptation” (Juhola et al., 2016, Environmental Science & Policy), “Challenges of adaptation to climate change across multiple scales: a case study of network governance in two European countries” (Juhola and Westerhoff, 2011), “An adaptation justice index” (2022), and “Climate Change Adaptation in Coastal Cities: A Guidebook for Citizens and Planners” (Major and Juhola, 2021). Her Google Scholar profile records over 9,000 citations, an h-index of 52, and i10-index of 113. She supervises the Doctoral Programme in Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences.