As a human geographer and postdoctoral lecturer/researcher at the Department of Geography/Kiel, I have been teaching Political Ecology and Environmental Justice classes as my favourites for more than 10 years.  In my PhD-project, I studied the transformation of traditional marine resource use in Indigenous communities in Nicaragua/Panama, focusing on changing institutions and local knowledges embedded in spiritual worldviews, and on local perceptions of environmental change such as sea-level rise. The communities are entangled in struggles with powerful economic actors and interest groups on different levels of scales, as well as in struggles for recognition and territorial autonomy. In this context, the creation of neo-traditional institutions for resource use and the local discourses on the unity of human-nature relations embedded in wider discourses on Indigeneity have been fascinating. In other small projects I have worked on migration and exclusion of Romanian Roma in Germany/France and on a protest movement against a large gold-mining project in Romania. I have begun to participate in the Enjust network during the time of its founding in 2018.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Latin America/Caribbean, France, Romania, Germany

Mennatullah is an urban planner and visual thinker who aims to inspire sustained and empowered urban development through communication towards a just socio-spatial and visual reality. Mennatullah have long been fascinated by the way knowledge, power, and (in)justice are manifested in and co-construct cities and the public sphere. She is currently a visiting scholar at Columbia university, research associate and PhD candidate at The Technical university of Berlin, an associated researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) in Erkner, Germany and an affiliated assistant lecturer at the department of urban planning and design in Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt.

She is moved by the exploration of ‘agency’, ‘justice’ and ‘assumptions’ within socio-spatial everyday encounters. She is interested in how to enable the vulnerable majority and how to develop communities in an integrated manner. She certainly practices urban planning, design and education as approaches to empowerment with an aim to cover the gap in theory building in contested urban contexts. As a multipotentialite interested in intersections, she deals with urban planning as a developmental multidisciplinary field.

She believes in the role of research in driving local development and national policies as well as the importance of transferring knowledge and systems between global north and south through win-win means. As she views learning and research as two-way cyclic processes, the impact she strives for is the growth of all the humans she meets along her journey. In particular, she is interested in experimental methodologies and participatory action research through which she aspires to take values into action by connecting justice and urban planning.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Egypt, Mediatized World

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Senior Researcher in Integrative Geography at the University of Bern. His current research focuses on agroecological transitions in sub-Saharan Africa with a critical perspective and an emphasis on social justice aspects. His research has the overall objective of integrating social-ecological thinking and the idea of justice. This includes conceptual and empirical work looking at environmental justice issues in telecoupled social-ecological systems, the relevance of cognitive justice in environmental governance and ecosystem management, and resilience justice in relation with climate change, natural resource governance and rural smallholders in the Global South. His main research areas are in Latin America (Bolivia, Cuba, Brazil) and in sub-Sahran Africa (Senegal, Kenya).

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Mountain Regions, Latin America, Africa

Website

Rebecca Bratspies is a Law Professor at City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law, and the founding Director of the Center for Urban Environmental Reform. She is an internationally recognized expert on environmental justice, food justice, and the human right to a healthy environment. Professor Bratspies has written scores of law review articles, op-eds, and other publications. Her most recent book is Environmental Justice: Law Policy and Regulation.

Professor Bratspies serves as an appointed member of the New York City’s Environmental Justice Advisory Panel, and US EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee. She is a scholar with the Center for Progressive Reform, Deputy Director for North American with the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment, and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Law in Context. She is Past-President of the American Association of Law Schools Section on the Environment. A former Luce Scholar, she is a graduate of Wesleyan University and holds a law degree cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania.

Her environmentally-themed comic books Mayah’s Lot and Bina’s Plant, made in collaboration with artist Charlie LaGreca-Velasco, have brought environmental literacy to a new generation of environmental leaders.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: New York City

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An Interdisciplinary PhD Candidate at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Angela Antle was the 2025 Rachel Carson Writer-in-Residence at Munich’s LMU and is a member of NMBU Norway’s Empowered Futures: A Global Research School Navigating the Social and Environmental Controversies of Low-Carbon Energy Transitions. Her current research focuses on the role of political rhetoric in climate obstruction. She integrates feminist, postcolonial perspectives, and energy justice theories in the field of climate communications. A former CBC producer, her work was recognized by the Atlantic Journalism Awards, The New York Festivals, The Gabriels, The Gracie Allen Awards, The Nickel, Berlinale, Dublin, and Wexford Film Festivals. Antle now produces and hosts the environmental humanities podcast GYRE, writes an energy futures column in the Independent.ca and her debut novel The Saltbox Olive was published by Breakwater Books in 2025.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: North Atlantic, Newfoundland and Labrador & Norway

Links: (www.Angelaantle.com.)

Professor of society and environment, at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur. Member of the Academic Group of Gender Studies. Her current research in the Gulf Coast focuses on gender relations in fishermen’s households. Further research focuses on the cultural and social consequences of oil infrastructure development in the Gulf of Mexico, using theory from political ecology.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Gulf of Mexico, Southeastern Mexico

Link