Professor Elisabeth Holland is the Professor of Ocean and Climate Change and the Director of the Pacific Center for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) at the University of the South Pacific (USP), one of only two regional universities in the world serving 12 Pacific Island countries: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

She recently served as Norway-Pacific Chair in the Oceans and Climate Change, a joint appointment of USP and the University of Bergen (UiB) based at USP’s Laucala Bay campus in Fiji. Professor Holland was USP’s Professor of Climate Change from 2012-2019. Professor Holland was the first ecological scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado where she became a senior scientist and interdisciplinary research leader. Professor Holland was a founding member of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, the 17th Max Planck Institute founded following German reunification.

Professor Holland brings more than 30 years of climate change research experience to the Pacific. She served as an author in all six cycles of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, including the recent Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. Elisabeth’s current research focuses on Pacific ocean:climate interactions and the science:policy interface. She supports the empowerment of Pacific students and communities to build climate and disaster resilient futures. Professor Holland has a profound understanding of the climate risks facing the people and cultures of the Pacific Ocean and Islands.

Professor Holland won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Professor Holland has been honored as a Leopold Fellow, Bjerknes Fellow at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research at UiB, and Fellow of the American Associate of the Advancement of Sciences in Atmospheric and Hydrological Sciences.