Karen O’Brien is a professor at the University of Oslo and co-founder of CHANGE, an organization that supports transformation in a changing climate. Her research emphasizes the social and human dimensions of global environmental change. 

She has been named as one of the most influential researchers over the past decade and has written and contributed to many articles, books, and reports. In 2021 she was a co-recipient of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award for Climate Change. O’Brien’s new book You Matter More Than You Think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World introduces a radically different way of thinking about climate change and social change. 

Inspired by ideas from quantum physics and quantum social science, this new approach – known as quantum social change - describes a conscious, nonlinear, and non-local approach to the transformations needed right now to address multiple global crises and shows how every single one of us matters in the process of transforming our future.