Patricia Widener is a professor of sociology at Florida Atlantic University, and her research and teaching interests include social movements and environmental, climate, and marine justice. In the past, she has researched how communities and environmental groups responded to offshore and onshore oil extraction or expansion activities in Aotearoa New Zealand, Ecuador, and in Florida in the U.S. Currently, she is exploring how coastal Florida is responding to sea-level rise and coastal erosion. She is also engaged in an ongoing project examining the visual and coastal opportunity space for climate awareness, ecological educations, oil promotions, and oil resistance along the Florida and Gulf of Mexico coastlines in the U.S.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Sites of Offshore and Onshore Oil & Gas Extraction. Past research has included Ecuador, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the U.S., including Alaska, Florida, and Texas. Current research is along the Florida and Gulf of Mexico coastlines in the U.S.

Fernanda Figueroa is a full-time professor in the Department of Ecology and Natural Resources at the Faculty of Sciences, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Her work lies at the intersection of political ecology, environmental governance, and socio-environmental justice, with a focus on the social processes shaping ecosystem conservation and transformation in rural and peri-urban contexts. Her work combines research, teaching, and collaboration addressing society–nature relations, particularly protected areas, environmental policies, inequality, and territory from a critical perspective. Her recent work centers on territorial transitions in the Southern Yucatan Peninsula.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Southern Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

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Master Student at Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, in the programme Sustainability, Society, and the Environment. As a research assistant in the Urban- and Population Geography working group of the CAU his focus is set on processes of green gentrification, energetic retrofitting and energy justice in Kiel. Furthermore, his master thesis will be based on the topic of financialization of the social housing market and the resulting urban development in Sao Paulo. Finally, he is interested in science communication and science’s role in social society. Overall, the urban realm is at the center of his studies, researching about the influence of capitalistic patterns of urban development and ruptures in this overarching trend.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Brazil, Sao Paulo, Kiel

I’m a Mexican from the Global South, but with a broader context from the Global North as well. I work in social innovation and addressing root causes. My main focus is on nature-based social innovation,with a focus on the health, well-being, and cohesion of people and the planet because we are also nature.

Country/Region of interest/research focus:Nature Based Social Innovation México

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Amit Ambekar is a climate and sustainability practitioner and doctoral researcher in Human Geography at Kiel University. His doctoral research examines proximity, responsibility and environmental justice in climate governance, with a particular focus on how institutional and spatial arrangements shape the attribution of responsibility and accountability. He is developing the concept of “Proximity Collapse” to understand how responsibility can become difficult to identify and enforce when authority, consequences and governance mechanisms are distributed across different territories, scales, places and networks. His empirical research is beginning with water governance in India, with a possible comparative European dimension. Alongside his doctoral work, Amit works professionally across climate governance, climate adaptation, water, landscape restoration and sustainability strategy in India, combining applied policy and institutional experience with academic research.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: India, with comparative interest in European climate and water governance

Links: amitambekar.substack.com, https://www.linkedin.com/in/amit-ambekar-06276a18/