Associate Professor Kate Crowley has been an environmental and public policy academic at the School of Government University of Tasmania since 1994. Prior to that, she worked in policy officer positions in recreation, youth affairs, public administration and industrial relations, and as a cross country ski instructor and secondary teacher.

Kate was born in Darlinghurst, Sydney New South Wales and grew up next to the Kurringah Chase National Park before moving with her family to the Melbourne beachside suburb of Brighton.  She was a keen runner at school, and was introduced to bushwalking and cross-country skiing at Monash University where she eventually was President of the Bushwalking Club.  After falling off a cliff, she gave up rock climbing to concentrate on cross country ski racing and instruction, and represented Australia in both, for a while as Australia’s most highly credentialed female cross country ski instructor. 

Kate has published extensively on environmental politics and policy.  She has been a member of two international research groups, one run by the University of British Columbia examining comparative climate change politics and policy, and the other convened by the European Consortium of Political Research as a joint session examining environmental policy appraisal.  She has won research awards for work investigating sustainability governance and sub-national planning, and for a study of the effectiveness of climate change councils.  She has received funding to investigate whole of government policy pathways, the prospects of governance for sustainability, the effectiveness of intergovernmental partnerships, and the role of greens in partnering government.

 As an applied policy analyst, Kate has designed a Framework for Reducing Tasmanian Government Emissions that has been implemented in its entirety by the Tasmanian government.  She wrote the Tasmanian Environment Industry Plan, which was unanimously endorsed by the Tasmanian Development Board and launched by the Tasmanian Premier.  As the University’s representative on Tasmania Together, she contributed to the development and benchmarking of the Tasmanian state vision and plan.  She has been a member of the Department of Economic Development’s Environment Industry Council as Deputy Chair since its inception, and in recent years as its Chair, and in 2009 has been invited to Chair the inaugural Tasmanian Climate Action Council. 

When not working, Kate enjoys spending time with her family, exercising, reading and crafting sculptural ceramics. She is married to her landscape architect husband, Jerry de Gryse, with whom she has one daughter Alouisa, and lives in the inner city of Hobart.