Jan’s PhD from Auckland University’s Film, Television and Media Studies department (2012) examined why the news media largely ignored scientific certainties about the risks of climate change. Her content analysis showed that the US news media framed climate change risks as ‘political not physical’, and a problem for ‘others’ not ‘us’. 

Before returning to university, Jan worked nationally and internationally as a journalist for television, radio and print news media.  In New Zealand her news media experience included working for Morning Report, The Dominion and the Sunday Star-Times.  Internationally, she wrote on climate change for New Scientist, The Observer and The Guardian.

Jan’s professional experience includes information and advocacy public relations work.

Internationally, she wrote speeches for the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); wrote the UNEP popular versions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1995 and 2001 reports on the science of climate change;  coordinated Greenpeace International's global climate change and ozone campaigns;  and was a Commonwealth Secretariat appointee as expert editor and media adviser for the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).  In New Zealand, she worked as Parliamentary Press Secretary for Dr Michael Cullen, then Finance spokesperson for the NZ Labour Party. 

 Awards:

Sceptics Society (for a Sunday Star-Times article about a UFO conference)

Auckland Students’ Association Lecturer of the Year (LOTY): highly commended awards 2012-2022.

 Qualifications: 

PhD (Auckland University, 2012)

Diploma of Teaching (Auckland Education Board, 1973)

 Publications (academic):

Sinclair, J.M. (2013).  Dangerously political: news media framings of climate change.  In J. Salinger (Ed.), Living in a Warmer World:  How a changing climate will affect our lives. Collingwood, VIC: CSIRO Publishing.

Establishing editor, AlterNative, an international academic journal of indigenous peoples published by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, Centre of Māori Research Excellence, Auckland University (2005 – 2007)

 Publications (professional):

More than ten thousand news stories and feature articles, initially on general news topics and then increasingly focused on investigative stories about the science and risks of climate change.