Author, Journalist, Speaker & Academic
Dr. Olive Heffernan is an award-winning science journalist who writes about oceans and climate change for a broad range of international publications. Her work has appeared in Nature, National Geographic, Scientific American, New Scientist, WIRED, BBC, Salon, Nature Climate Change and Guardian. Her first book THE HIGH SEAS: AMBITION, POWER AND GREED ON THE UNCLAIMED OCEAN was published in May 2024.
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Olive started her career as a marine biologist and research scientist, but has worked as a science journalist and editor for the past twenty years. Before going freelance, Olive was an editor with Nature in London for five years, first covering climate change online, before becoming the first chief editor of the pioneering research journal Nature Climate Change. In 2019, Olive established a course on Communicating Climate Change at Johns Hopkins University, as part of their Master’s Program in Science Writing. She has previously received a Giles St Aubyn award from the Royal Society of Literature for non-fiction, and in 2024, has received funding from the Pulitzer Centre to report on ocean conservation in Ireland. She lives in Dublin.