Cristine Russell is an award-winning freelance journalist who has written about science, health and the environment, particularly climate change, for four decades. She is a senior fellow at HKS’ Environment & Natural Resources Program who works with the Arctic Initiative and is a former HKS Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy.

Russell has written for Columbia Journalism Review, Scientific American, the Atlantic, Undark and other publications and earlier was a national science reporter for The Washington Post and The Washington Star. She is active in efforts to improve international science journalism and communication to the general public about controversies in science. At HKS, Russell has organized speaker series on Climate, Energy and the Media. She was a Spring 2006 Fellow at the HKS Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Russell is past President of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and of the National Association of Science Writers. In 2020, Russell was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is an honorary member of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.