Elena Zepharovich is a researcher at the Centre for Development and Environment at the University of Bern. She finished her PhD at University of Bern at the Institute of Geography. Before joining the CDE, she was working at Vienna University of Economics (WU) in the Department of Ecological Economics in the field of Education for Sustainable Development. Her current research focus lies on inequality, environmental justice, and deforestation in the Argentinean Chaco.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Argentinia

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Friedrich Neu is a researcher and lecturer at the Chair of Geography of Global Change at Freiburg University, with a teaching focus on climate change adaptation through excursions mainly to Switzerland and Ghana and through seminars scrutinizing adaptation processes in the Global South. His current PhD research is grounded in the interplay of anthropogenic climate change and human-induced environmental change in delta regions and particularly examines the adaptation to subsequent coastal erosion and inundation through state-led resettlement. Therein, a case study in Ghana’s Volta River Delta is used for empirical research. He applies strands of political ecology and justice perspectives to advance the recently created research field of Critical Geography of Resettlement within the spatial boundary of delta regions. Friedrich Neu’s main research area is in sub-Saharan Africa with a special focus on formerly Rwanda and currently Ghana.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Coastal Regions, Global South, Ghana

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Paola Villavicencio Calzadilla is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law and the Tarragona Center for Environmental Law Studies (CEDAT) of the University Rovira i Virgili (URV), Spain. She received her PhD in Law, specialty in climate change law, and her Master’s Degree on Environmental Law, both from the URV. After completing her PhD, she undertook a three-year postdoctoral research fellowship at the Faculty of Law of the North-West University (South Africa). She has been involved in several research projects and has collaborated with research centers, including the IUCN Environmental Law Centre – ELC (Germany) and the Groningen Centre of Energy Law and Sustainability of the University of Groningen (the Netherlands). She worked as an attorney for public and private institutions and supported NGOs from Spain, Ecuador and Bolivia. She is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL) and of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps. Her main areas of interest include climate change law and governance, human rights and climate change, climate justice and energy justice, sustainable development goals and the Rights of Nature. She authored and co-authored several academic publications on these themes.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: International, Latin America

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Publications

Keywords: Climate Change Adaptation, Climate Politics, Degrowth, Energy Justice, Inter-and Transdisciplinary Research Methods, International Law, Migration, Socio-Ecological Transformation

{:en}Mirja Schoderer is a transdisciplinary researcher with expertise in environmental justice, political ecology, water, mining and conservation. She is an assistant professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she explores the uneven green transition, focusing on the extraction of critical raw materials and on how frontline communities experience and conceptualize extraction that takes place under the green transition paradigm. Her research centers lived experiences and creative methods and explores options to integrate plural knowledges and ontologies into public decision-making, for which she also applies context-sensitive synthesis methods. With a background in literature studies and environmental politics and management, Mirja’s work always comes back to how the material and the symbolic are interlinked, exploring, i.a., how imaginaries and discourses manifest in institutions and practices, and how these, in turn, consolidate or challenge imaginaries. Her PhD research on mining and water governance in Mongolia exemplifies this, but so does her more recent work on nature conservation in Colombia.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Mongolia

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Iván Vargas-Chaves has taught at universities in Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, Spain, and Peru, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Law at Universidad Militar Nueva Granada in Colombia, and member of the Intellectual Property in the Biosciences Group at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin. His research focuses on Law and Life Sciences, International Environmental Law, Plant Breeder’s Rights, and Genetic Resources Regulation. His work further explores the intersection of intellectual property and critical challenges in the life sciences, particularly their impacts on environmental issues.

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Country/Region of interest/research focus: Colombia

Political scientist, political ecologist and scholar-activist at the Chair of Global Climate Governance at the University of Hamburg and member of the research group “GLOCALPOWER – Funds, Tools and Networks for an African Energy Transition”. My research focus is on socio-ecological transformation, transition conflicts and energy and climate justice. A specific focus is on the role of social movements and trade unions in low-carbon transitions.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Germany, South Africa

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