Vienna, Austria, 10-12 July 2023
Conveners: Ingrid Boas (Wageningen University), Kees van der Geest (UNU-EHS), Francois Gemenne (University of Liege), Patrick Sakdapolrak (University of Vienna)
Local Organization: Harald Sterly, Marion Borderon & TransForm Working Group, University of Vienna
Date and Venue: 10 (afternoon) -12 (noon) July 2023, Vienna
Background: Climate mobilities and migration have for a long time been a niche topic in research, policies and public debate; this has changed in the past years, as is indicated by the number of publications, conferences, and the visibility in high-level meetings such as COP and in news and media. Research methodologies are becoming refined and more specialized, and the number of researchers in the topic is quickly growing. This is resulting, among others, in the emergence of epistemic and research communities with limited connectedness between each other (e.g. quantitative modeling, economics, development research, critical social science, legal studies, cultural studies, etc.). At the same time, public and policy discourses would benefit from inputs by a stronger research community.
The network: Given this background, we - environmental mobility researchers from the University of Vienna, Wageningen University, the Hugo Observatory, and the United Nations University - aim to build an open, transdisciplinary research network on climate mobility. The key objectives of this network are:
- to provide a forum and platform for exchange, the sharing of ideas and further advancing the field of environmental mobility research;
- to build opportunities for new collaborations, and the networking for young researchers;
- to support the structuring and formulation of further research agendas, and key directions to explore;
- to strengthen research-practice-policy linkages and increase the outreach in debates on climate mobility.
We envision the backbone of this network to be a yearly symposium organized by stakeholders of the network, bringing together the members of different research groups and communities.
With the launch event, we want to bring together researchers from different disciplines, as well as policy advisors and practitioners. The event will foster the exchange between and across disciplinary boundaries and epistemic communities and get insights in emerging topics, approaches, and methods. It will serve to network and connect with others, identify options for research collaborations and support career opportunities. It will also enable the participants to shape the purpose, direction and form of this new network.
The event will thus consist of a variety of formats:
- keynote talks on the state of the art of important research communities (social research, modeling, policy science, legal research, practitioners, etc.);
- contributions from participants on their research and field of action (the exact form and duration of inputs is to be decided);
- interactive workshops on mapping the research landscape; on how to bring different approaches into fruitful conversation; on research gaps, hot topics, and future directions; and on the further activities of the network.
- social events for networking and community-building.
We aim to publish key contributions in a special issue.
Call for Contributions: we invite contributions from all relevant disciplines and fields on the variety of themes related the topic (diverse mobilities and immobilities in the context of environmental and climate change: diversity of environmental and climatic events and change processes; the role of socio-economic, socio-cultural and socio-political processes for (im)mobilities; the range of methodological approaches and advancements; elevant policy processes, their implications and ways the question how science policy divide can be bridged).
- If you want to contribute with an own presentation, please submit an abstract of max. 250 words until 15 March 2023 at: https://bit.ly/3Dse8f6
- Participation without contribution: Participants without own contribution are also highly welcome. Please register until 15 May 2023 at: https://bit.ly/3Dse8f6 .
If you have any questions regarding the networking event, please write to Patrick Sakdapolrak (patrick.sakdapolrak@univie.ac.at) or Harald Sterly (harald.sterly@univie.ac.at).