Hannah Hilligardt, PhD, is interested in particular in the question how to think about the societal role of climate scientists in light of historical and persisting injustices and inequalities: should scientists and scientific institutions like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) strive to stay neutral? Should they explicitly take the side of vulnerable groups? Should they become climate activists? If so, what are the limits that their role imposes on them? Currently, she explores these questions by looking at the history of research on climate tipping points. More info at https://hannahhilligardt.com/.
Julie Jebeile, SNSF professor, studies how scientific models, visual representations and narratives can provide explanations and understanding. In the context of climate change, she focuses on how those representations can also offer usable information, i.e. reliable, relevant and legitimate information. She is interested in how socioeconomic values shape scientific knowledge production and engineering research & development. Her research interests cover scientific knowledge and technology foresight in the service of policy making, in particular for climate change mitigation and adaptation. More info at https://juliejebeile.net/.
Sapna Kumar, PhD student, explores in her research the role of Indigenous and local knowledge in climate adaptation and climate action, and the deep entanglement between epistemic and climate injustice towards Indigenous peoples and local communities. She investigates the interaction and tension between different ways of knowing, with a specific attention on oppression, injustices and resistance.
Futura Venuto, PhD student, is interested in understanding the role of science within society and trying to answer the question of what good science is. Given science’s institutional authority and the concrete vulnerability of communities, specific attention to the epistemic and moral dimensions of understanding, adapting to, and mitigating climate change is fundamental. Currently, she is exploring the role that uncertainty, values, and beliefs play in implementing courses of action that aim to respond to the climate crisis, contributing to debates on the uncertainty evaluation and communication of climate models’ projections and climate skepticism as an instance of illegitimate dissent.