Post-Doc Fellows

Alessandra Accogli has completed her PhD in Law at University College Dublin, Sutherland School of Law and has recently submitted her doctoral thesis on the legal protection of carbon sinks. In particular, her work lies at the intersection of climate change law, environmental law and human rights law. With the help of a case study on peatlands in Ireland, she investigates the tensions and synergies between protecting and restoring peatlands as important carbon sinks in Ireland and respecting the human rights of local people who depend on the ecosystem for their livelihoods and/or culture.

The three-month research stay as a 2024 Climate Change Fellow at the University of Graz will be devoted to exploring the concept of ‘just transition’ in climate policy. Alessandra will work under the guidance of Prof Oliver Ruppel at ClimLaw: Graz on how to take a human rights approach to operationalise the concept of ‘just transition’ and incorporate justice and equity considerations into climate legislation/policy dealing with carbon sinks.

Constance Bwire is an Environmental Health researcher. She is Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom. Constance focuses on climate change and its impact on urban health, especially in children. With a strong academic background that includes a PhD in Sustainable Science from the United Nations University, her work spans across research, capacity building, and stakeholder engagement. She is particularly passionate about addressing climate change's effects on public health and creating resilient urban environments for vulnerable populations.

Constance’s research at University of Graz will focus on urban climate resilience, with a particular emphasis on public health. Her study aims to assess the perceptions of urban residents regarding climate resilience and the effectiveness of current urban infrastructure in mitigating climate-related risks. Through cross-sectional surveys in major global cities, the research seeks to identify vulnerabilities and areas for improvement in urban infrastructure, while gathering residents' suggestions on enhancing city resilience. This research is critical for informing policy recommendations that address the growing risks of climate change on urban populations, particularly in terms of public health and sustainable development​

Emily Stewart is a transdisciplinary researcher, writer and academic based in Sydney Australia. Her Doctorate of Creative Arts was awarded in 2023 and examined feminist walking practices under the long arc of climate change from the romantic period to the present day. She has several years of teaching and research experience across Arts, Humanities and Creative Writing disciplines and also works as a communications consultant in the transport and construction sectors. As an award-winning writer, she has published two collections of poetry including Running Time, which was awarded the Helen Anne Bell poetry award, Australia’s most significant poetry bequest. She is currently developing a book of cultural criticism about cars, the research for which is being supported by the Australian arts body Creative Australia and its Marten Bequest Scholarship program.

As a 2024 Climate Change Fellow, Emily will be working alongside Urban HEAP on its recently launched SPECIFIC project. This project focuses on sustainable mobility in the urban fringes and aims to support context-sensitive implementation of the 15-minute city concept. She will be engaged in a reciprocal exchange with the project that will animate her ongoing research into contemporary car cultures. 

Pierre André obtained his PhD in Philosophy from Sorbonne University in Paris (France) in 2020. From 2021, he was an FNRS Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics, at the University of Louvain (Belgium). His research focuses on climate justice, in particular the ethics of carbon pricing and loss and damage. He is the co-author, with Axel Gosseries, of a soon-to-be published introduction to climate justice (La justice climatique, Presses Universitaires de France, 2024). He also has an interdisciplinary background, with an MA in Political Science (Freie Universität Belin, Germany) and an MSc in Management (HEC Paris, France), as well as work experience in renewable energy and finance. As a Climate Change Post Doc Fellow in Graz, his research will focus on the ethical justification of a climate corporate tax to fund compensation for the victims of the effects of climate change. 

Jeroen Hopster is Assistant Professor of Ethics at Utrecht University, and researcher in the consortium Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies (ESDiT). His main two research foci are climate ethics (just transitions, uncertainty, precaution) and technology ethics (technomoral change, social disruption). He obtained his PhD from Utrecht University (2019), with a visiting fellowship at Harvard. Thereafter he did postdoctoral research at the University of Graz and the University of Twente, and held visiting positions at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and UniSR in Milan. During 2019-2021, he worked on the research project “Climate Futures: Real Possibilities and the Ethics of Uncertainty”, funded by a NWO Rubicon grant. From 2024-2027, he will be funded by a NWO VENI grant to execute the research project “Lost in Transition: The Moral Significance of Frustrated Expectations in Europe’s Climate Transition.”

At the University of Graz, Hopster will do normative research in connection with this upcoming VENI-project, by assessing the normative claims of those who “lose out” in the climate transition. Can the Sámi people legitimately expect to retain their territory for reindeer herding, while the Norwegian government would like to use this territory to construct a windmill park? Can fossil fuel producers legitimately expect some kind of transitional relief (e.g., compensation) for stranded assets? More fundamentally, on what grounds can we differentiate between the moral significance of frustrated expectations, held by different kinds of expectation-holders? The project will build on long-standing expertise about legitimate expectations at the section of Moral and Political Philosophy, where it is embedded. Additionally, it may involve collaboration with social researchers to investigate the role of frustrated expectations underlying anti-transition protests.