Steve Dovers focuses on the generic policy and institutional dimensions of sustainable development, disasters and climate adaptation, combining contemporary and historical perspectives, across a diverse range of sectors and issues including climate adaptation, emergency management and disasters, biodiversity, water, urban studies, forests, coastal management and sustainable agriculture. 

Emeritus Professor Steve Dovers was originally trained as an ecologist and natural resource manager, and worked in agricultural experimentation, local government and heritage management. He later studied geography at graduate level, and gained a PhD in environmental policy in 1996. He became an academic member of staff at the then Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at the ANU in 1997. From 2009-2017 he was Director of the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the ANU, and an inaugural ANU Public Policy Fellow. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, was inaugural Chair of the Management Committee of Future Earth Australia; is Chair of the Science Advisory Committee of The Mulloon Institute, Associate Editor of the Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, and member of the editorial Boards of the journals Local Environments, Environmental Science and Policy, and Resilience. Steve is a Senior Associate with the advisory firm Aither.

Steve continues with primary supervisor and advisory roles with a number of research students, however new primary supervisory opportunities are now limited.  

Currently supervising or co-supervising several research students, in areas including conservation policy, disasters, climate adaptation and public policy. 

Steve has supervisied or co-supervisied 70 current and completed PhD students over the past two decades, across a variety of areas in environment, resource management and sustainability. Former students have gone on to a wide range of careers, including senior academic posts and policy positions in government agencies.