Feminist Perspectives on Climate Research (FemClim 2026)

Research on climate change is situated within a context of historical and persisting injustices: populations who have contributed the least to global warming are currently most vulnerable to its impacts (e.g. Nakashima, 2018), regions of the world that are most vulnerable are often less well researched than regions in the Global North (e.g. James et al. 2018), and the knowledge and expertise of marginalised groups – including women, Indigenous people, young, (dis)abled, people of colour – is often not taken into account, leading to the intersection of climate, racial and gender injustice (Whyte, 2014; Whyte, 2016; Tuana and Cuomo, 2014). These injustices have to be reckoned with for climate research to be both reliable and fair. Indeed, the scientific community is currently facing major challenges that are not strictly epistemic: modelling and projecting climate impacts at local scales, filling in the knowledge gaps, addressing the human dimensions of climate change, and meeting the diversity of needs of the populations on Earth are all both epistemic and ethical issues. Yet, how to acknowledge and address injustices within knowledge production, how to design models and studies in order to fairly address people’s needs, how to organise the climate research community and how to effectively communicate about climate information and its uncertainty, are matters of ongoing but often behind-the-scenes debates.

The aim of this workshop is to explore ways in which resources from feminist epistemology can come to bear on these problems of injustice in climate research and climate action.

Programme:

Monday 18 May 2026 

13:30-13:55 Welcome 

13:55-14:30 Hannah Hilligardt, Julie Jebeile, Sapna Kumar & Futura Venuto (Universität Bern, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research) Presentation of the SNSF research project “Climate Change Adaptation through the Feminist Kaleidoscope” 

14:30-15:10 Olivia Maegaard Nielsen* (Universität Bremen) & Frida Hjortkjær Ekelund* (independent) ‘Climate Fools’ and ‘Eco-terrorists’ - On Danish Media’s Silencing of Environmental Activists 

15:10-15:50 Timothée Cabos (École Normale Supérieure Paris) Relational accounts of data and epistemic injustices: The case of satellites as climate data sources 

15:50-16:20 Coffee break 

16:20-17:35 Kristen Intemann (Montana State University) Learning from Greenland: A Standpoint Approach to Equitable Climate Research 

*** 18:30 Conference dinner *** 

Tuesday 19 May 2026  

09:15-09:55 Ulrike Proske* & Melsen Lieke (Wageningen University) Climate modelers as “pragmatic realists” 

09:55-10:35 Julia Mindlin* (Universität Leipzig) & Fiona Spuler* (University of Reading) Accounting for multiple lines of evidence for losses and damages from climate change: investigating the extreme fire seasons in Brazilian Amazon and Pantanal biomes  

10:35-11:05 Coffee break 

11:05-11:45 Niklas Gärtner (Université Grenoble Alpes) What Counts as Evidence? Reconsidering Evidence-Based Policy for Climate Change Adaptation 

11:45-13:00 Olivia Romppainen-Martius (Universität Bern) Flood risk assessment tools for Switzerland 

13:00-14:30 Lunch  

14:30-15:10 Meret Haldemann*, Ana Maria Vicedo Cabrera & Apolline Saucy (Universität Bern) Extreme temperatures and the risk of hospitalization during pregnancy – analysis of cause-specific emergency hospital admission records from 1998 to 2023 in Switzerland 

15:10-15:50 Claudia Matus (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) Gender as an Epistemological Lens in Biodiversity Data Production: Rethinking Open-Air Laboratories 

15:50-16:20 Coffee break 

16:20-17:35 Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera (Universität Bern) Climate change, health and feminism: from gender medicine to climate action

Wednesday 20 May 2026  

09:15-09:55 Julianne Mann (University of North Dakota) Consensual Sacrifice: Managing Ignorance, Managing Vulnerability 

09:55-10:35 Lauren Ware (Canterbury Cathedral Gardens) Ingestive Injustice: Emotion, Epistemic Harm, and Wild Food Knowledge in Climate Adaptation 

10:35-11:05 Coffee break 

11:05-11:45 Carolina Cuadrado Bastos (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) Unfixing evolution. Biological agency as a foundation for transformative climate adaptation 

11:45-13:00 Nancy Tuana (Penn State University) Embedding Feminist Values in Climate Risk Management: Challenges and Opportunities 

13:00-14:30 Lunch