Call for experienced researcher in interviews on global environmental negotiations

Alice Vadrot (Vienna University) and I are looking for a researcher to participate in a workshop on methods for Conducting research at global environmental negotiations.

The workshop will take place at the University of Vienna, 10-11th of September 2019.

The prospective participant needs to have extensive experience in conducting interviews on global environmental negotiations, from the intergovernmental meeting to all elements of mega-events, including the COPs, side events, surrounding protest to the sites connected or impacted by these events.

Abstract 

Recent scholarship in Global Environmental Politics makes apparent the importance of gaining access and observing the making of global environmental agreements in order to understand the process and power relations of their formation (Campbell et al. 2014; Ciplet, Roberts and Khan 2015; Depledge 2013; Dimitrov 2010). As more scholars attend and collect data at intergovernmental meetings and global mega-events, the need to develop new conceptual and methodological apparatus to capture the dynamics within and between these sites has become apparent, which has resulted in interventions and developments in the field (Betsill and Correll 2007; Campbell et al. 2014; Corson et al. 2019; Hughes, Marion Suiseeya and Vadrot 2019).

While these innovations challenge our understanding of the people, practices, and power relations that shape global environmental politics, they do not provide practical guidance to those new to these study sites. An increasing number of scholars use the mega biodiversity, climate change and sustainable development conferences as sites to gain access to networks of global environmental politics and interview participants. Many also attend intergovernmental meeting sites to observe and document the actors, practices, discourses and institutional dynamics of global environmental agreement making. However, once on site, researchers do not always have a clear sense of how to cope with the scale of researching the complex interactions that are apparent on arrival, which meeting or side-event to attend, or from whom to collect data and how to make sense of it.

This workshop will bring together scholars experienced in global environmental negotiations and contributing to the development and application of conceptual and methodological innovations. The aim is to further develop these innovations and produce a guide for those new to the study of environmental meetings. To achieve this, the workshop will integrate the needs and perspectives of postgraduate scholars so that together we can explore how a new generation of research can be catalysed, the aim of which is to transform how we collectively study global environmental agreement making.

For more details, see PDF.

We ask all workshop participants to prepare a 2-3000 word concept paper.

Please send an abstract to maripoldata.erc@univie.ac.at on how your research interests and experiences connect to the project by June 30^th.