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.
Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science are fields which have reflected on the way power imbalances shape knowledge production for decades. Yet, these resources have only rarely been applied to climate research. In this workshop, we aim to bring together scholars from philosophy of climate science, feminist philosophy and climate researchers who are interested in and reflect upon the intersections between these different literatures.
The workshop is part of and organised by members of the SNSF-funded project "Climate Change Adaptation through the Feminist Kaleidoscope -- Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Climate Science". More information on our project can be found in https://femphiloclimate.ch/.
Invited speakers:
Kristen Intemann, Montana State University, US
Olivia Romppainen-Martius, University of Bern, Switzerland
Nancy Tuana, Penn State University, US
Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera, University of Bern, Switzerland
Important dates:
Submission deadline: 30th of November 2025
Abstract review period: 1st of December 2025 – 30th of January 2026
Registration deadline: 30th of April 2026
Contact:
FemClim.oeschger@unibe.ch
