Upcoming Talks

Speaker: Dana Fisher, American University Washington, DC

How do we understand the evolution of climate activism and protest and what role will it play in getting society through the climate crisis? This talk integrates data collected over 25 years studying climate policymaking and civil society's role in addressing the climate crisis. It presents the most realistic path forward for climate action—which is driven by a mass mobilization that responds to the growing severity and frequency of climate shocks. Spurred by a lack of progress, climate activism has become increasingly confrontational, and a radical flank has emerged. The presentation will discuss when and how activism is most successful, identifying the importance of creating community, capitalizing on shocking moments, and cultivating resilience. It will present the findings from Fisher's recent book, Saving Ourselves: from Climate Shocks to Climate Action, along with data that were collected more recently.

Speaker: Esther Turnhout, University of Twente

Within climate and biodiversity science, we see increasing calls for transformative change. These calls are based on the recognition that fundamental shifts in economic and political systems are needed to secure a socially and ecologically just and sustainable future. These calls for transformative change coming from science are accompanied by repeated calls for the transformation of science. These calls are based on the recognition that fundamental shifts in how science is done are needed to strengthen its contribution to society. In this lecture, I will discuss the progress made as well as continued stagnation and inertia in response to these two calls. Specifically, I will argue that dominant norms and conceptualizations of what science is and how it should relate to policy and society, have locked environmental science into a situation in which it continues to serve vested interests and reproduce the status quo and that, consequently, environmental science has become an obstacle for the transformative changes it continues to call for. I will also outline what is needed to transform environmental science so that it can support transformative change.

Prof. Dr. Esther Turnhout is chair of Science, Technology and Society at the Section of Knowledge, Transformation & Society (KiTeS), University of Twente, The Netherlands. She is an interdisciplinary social scientist with expertise in science and technology studies, environmental studies and political science. Her research and teaching concern topics such as the politics of biodiversity knowledge, science-policy interfaces, and inclusion, justice and pluralism in knowledge making practices. She is also the first author of the book Environmental Expertise: Connecting Science, Policy and Society’ with Cambridge University Press and plays several active roles in the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Speaker: Hirohiko Masunaga, Nagoya University Japan

The most abundant precipitation on the Earth occurs over the tropical oceans in the so-called Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), a band of moist air extending near the equator from east to west. While it is intuitive that a moist atmosphere favors rich rainfall, the mechanism of tropical moist convection is not as simplistic as it may seem. A counterintuitive example is that heavy precipitation in the tropical east Pacific is found from time to time to develop at the edge of ITCZ in direct contact with a dry subtropical air rather than in the middle of ITCZ protected by its own moist airmass. The talk will begin with addressing this puzzle and offer an explanation with focus on the thermodynamic action of vertical air motion: a modest, shallow updraft at the ITCZ edge tends to grow stronger on its own while an intense, deep ascent at the ITCZ center is destined to decay. Further observations suggest that such contrasting behaviors depending on the depth of ascent may be integrated into a theory shedding new light on understanding the driving mechanism of tropical precipitation over its lifecycle.

Speaker: Daniel Schunk, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz

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Speaker: Åsa Wettergren, University of Gothenburg 

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