Humphrey Battcock Lecture
How to achieve resilient, secure, low-carbon economies: Lessons from China and the United States
When: Wednesday 20 May 2026
Where: The event will be live-streamed on Youtube. Click here to register.
Time: 5.15pm
With global geopolitics - and oil prices - in near daily turmoil, the need for a just transition to green energy is ever more apparent. But how does this seismic change towards green industrialisation actually happen? What does it look like in sectors that most of us interact with daily, like the automotive industry? What are the public policies that can permanently shift major economies and the processes of technological innovation that help or hinder progress? And what can we learn from two of the world's biggest players in this space - whose current approach seems diametrically opposed?
Join Dean of The Fletcher School, Tufts University, and Obama administration senior advisor, Dr Kelly Sims Gallagher as she explores how countries can move towards a more resilient and secure future in the midst of global crisis.
Professor Sims Gallagher will be joined by Cameron Hepburn, Professor of Environmental Economics, for discussion and Q&A.
About the 2026 Battcock Lecture
Smith School Director and Interim Dean, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Professor Mette Morsing is delighted to welcome Professor Sims Gallagher as this year’s guest speaker.
Kelly Sims Gallagher is Dean and Professor of Energy & Environmental Policy, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, USA. She directs the Climate Policy Lab and the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at The Fletcher School. From June 2014 – September 2015, she served in the Obama Administration as a Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and as Senior China Advisor in the Special Envoy for Climate Change office at the U.S. State Department. Gallagher is a member of the board of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and is a non-resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment.
Gallagher broadly focuses on green industrialization policy in the United States, China, and other major emerging economies. She specializes in how policy spurs the development and deployment of cleaner and more efficient energy technologies within countries and throughout the world. A Truman Scholar, she has a MALD and PhD in international affairs from The Fletcher School and an AB from Occidental College. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of "China Shifts Gears: Automakers, Oil, Pollution, and Development," (The MIT Press 2006), editor of "Acting in Time on Energy Policy," (Brookings Institution Press 2009), "The Global Diffusion of Clean Energy Technologies: Lessons from China," (MIT Press 2014), Titans of the Climate (with Xiaowei Xuan) (MIT Press 2018) and numerous academic articles and policy reports.
The Humphrey Battcock Lecture is a joint collaboration of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford and host, New College, Oxford.
