Circle 7: Act, React & Reflect: Meta-perspectives on climate change knowledge

Upcoming winter session:

Climate engagement and activism in academia and beyond

Call for abstracts to workshop, 23-24 April 2026, Halmstad University 

An invitation to a workshop organized within the Nordic Summer University Study Circle Act, React, and Reflect: Meta-perspectives on Climate Change Knowledge, and hosted by the Academy for Business, Innovation and Sustainability, Halmstad University, Sweden.

The existential threat posed by climate change, and urgent need for political action brought about by it has given occasion for actors in many sectors to re-evaluate their relationship with societal engagement. These actors are renegotiating their traditionally neutral and technocratic roles, whether as academic researchers taking to the streets to protest (lack of) climate policy or as professionals in the public or private sector seeking to reform their sectors from within. This increasingly engaged behavior (Dablander et al., 2024) is challenging ideas about value neutrality, objectivity, and the relationship between knowledge production and politics.

In this workshop we will explore the role of knowledge and expertise in various forms of climate engagement and activism. The rise of a wave of climate engagement and activism raises multiple questions of both analytical and practical relevance. While academic engagement, for example through industry collaboration, is an established, incentivized and well-researched practice in many fields, academic activism is a notoriously ill-defined term, even in the scattered literature addressing it (Bashiri et al., 2025). This raises conceptual questions of how to understand activism in relation to other modes of societal engagement (Perez Vico, 2018). Such modes of engagement may range from engaging as policy experts and think-tank collaborations and using research communication as activism (Graminius, 2023) via engaging with social movements’ use of research-based knowledge (Frickel, 2004; Frickel et al., 2015; Hess, 2022), to activism in the classroom or in the streets.

Furthermore, following themes from our previous sessions, a recurring question relates to how different kinds of expertise translate into forms of engagement. Climate engagement may thus require revisiting debates on the nature of expertise (Collins & Evans, 2002). As “activism” is increasingly used as a pejorative term and the politization of science has become a growing concern across the political spectrum, even older fundamental issues resurface, including debates about to the autonomy of science and its normative institutions (Merton, 1973), as well as the role of values embedded in activism as well as the status quo.

A different topic relates to the practical experiences, challenges and strategies of engaged actors and movements, and the dilemmas academic activists may face (Finnerty et al., 2024). Further questions include how different sites or contexts of engagement shape practices of engagement and activism. On a broader level, how does the historical and geopolitical macro-context condition activism or other modes of engagement? Moving beyond academia, how do engaged actors navigate institutional spaces, for example as public servants or in climate engagement in the private sector?

Focusing on engaged actors as well as public debates, a different question is how different actors legitimize, justify and critique activism as well as other modes of engagement. Relatedly, how are the justification of different modes of engagement linked to different conceptions of expertise? Furthermore, how is the field-specific knowledge of engaged actors and communities linked to modes of engagement and legitimation (Schönbauer, 2025)? Yet another set of questions relate to actors’ and movements’ conception of how societal impact or transformation works, and how this relates to strategies and modes of engagement. In other words, if the point of engaged research and practice is to change the world, how do engaged actors conceptualize the process of change?

We invite contributions relating to any of the topics discussed above, from any relevant discipline. Contributions can be either empirical and theoretical research, or practice-based reflections.

The workshop will feature two kinds of contributions. Participants can either submit a full paper (meaning that all or most parts of the paper draft should exist) or hold a shorter oral speed-talk. Speed talks could be an introduction to your research topic, ongoing project, or preliminary ideas from early stages of research.

Full papers will be given priority if we receive a large number of submissions.

Format 

The two-day workshop will focus on participants’ presentations, with sessions divided between longer in-depth discussions of full papers and shorter speed talks.

About Nordic Summer University

This workshop is part of Act, React & Reflect: Meta-perspectives on climate change knowledge, a three-year study circle under the umbrella of the Nordic Summer University (NSU). Through inter- and transdisciplinary exchanges during three thematic winter sessions and three summer sessions, we explore the role of knowledge in relation to climate change and sustainability transitions. The overarching aim of the study circle is to establish and grow a Nordic-Baltic research network centered on meta-perspectives on climate knowledge.

ECTS Credits for PhD students

Participating PhD students with full papers will be offered a certificate of participation for 2 ECTS credits upon request.

Important dates 

• Deadline for submission of abstracts: 12 December 2025
• Notification of acceptance: 19 December 2025
• Deadline for registration: 30 January 2026
• Deadline for submission of full papers: 10 April 2026
• Workshop: 23-24 April 2026

Abstract submission

Submit your abstract (max 300 words), a short bio (max 200 words), and full paper/ speed talk preference, via email to: Jakob.lundgren@hh.se and anders.hylmo@hh.se

Participation fee & travel grants

The participation fee covers NSU Membership, lunches and dinner.

Regular participants: 80€

Reduced fee (PhD students and independent researchers): 50€

Limited travel grants will be offered, primarily for PhD students in the Nordic & Baltic region. Please notify us of interest in travel grants when submitting your abstract.

Travels & how to get there

Halmstad University is located on the Swedish west coast, with direct hourly train services from Copenhagen (ca 2h) via Malmö, and from Gothenburg (1h 20min).

References

Bashiri, F., Perez Vico, E., & Hylmö, A. (2025). Scholar-activism as an object of study in a diverse literature: Preconditions, forms, and implications. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12(1), 1266. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05573-6

Collins, H., & Evans, R. (2002). The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience. Social Studies of Science, 32(2), 235–296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312702032002003

Dablander, F., Sachisthal, M. S. M., Cologna, V., Strahm, N., Bosshard, A., Grüning, N.-M., Green, A. J. K., Brick, C., Aron, A. R., & Haslbeck, J. M. B. (2024). Climate change engagement of scientists. Nature Climate Change, 14(10), 1033–1039. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02091-2

Finnerty, S., Piazza, J., & Levine, M. (2024). Between two worlds: The scientist’s dilemma in climate activism. Npj Climate Action, 3(1), 77. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-024-00161-x

Frickel, S. (2004). Just science? Organizing scientist activism in the US environmental justice movement. Science as Culture, 13(4), 449–469. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950543042000311814

Frickel, S., Torcasso, R., & Anderson, A. (2015). The Organization of Expert Activism: Shadow Mobilization in Two Social Movements*. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 20(3), 305–323. https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671X-20-3-305

Graminius, C. (2023). Open Letters and Climate Communication: The Professional Roles and Identities of Researchers in Times of Crisis. Environmental Communication, 17(6), 537–549. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2023.2225765

Hess, D. J. (2022). Environmental movements and scientific, technological and industrial change. In M. Grasso & M. Giugni (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Movements (pp. 488–502). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367855680

Merton, R. K. (1973). The Normative Structure of Science. In N. W. Storer (Ed.), The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations. Univ. of Chicago Pr.

Perez Vico, E. (2018). En översikt av forskningen om samverkansformer och deras effekter. Samverkansformer: Nya vägar för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap, 29–50.

Schönbauer, S. M. (2025). Environmental Care: How Marine Scientists Relate to Environmental Changes. Minerva, 63(1), 93–113. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-024-09538-y

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Past events:

• 2025 Summer Session: “Theorizing Sustainability Transitions and Transformations”
  21–28 July 2025, NSU Summer Session, Jyväskylä, Finland
  Call for papers (pdf link) and below (scroll down)
• 2025 Winter Session: Workshop on “Expertise and politics in climate change knowledge”
  27-28 February 2025, Department of Linguistics, Philosophy and Theory of science, Gothenburg University, Sweden.
  Call for papers | Program
• Invited PhD summer school/circle: “Act, React & Reflect: Meta-perspectives on climate change knowledge”
  29 July – 5 August 2024, Løgumkloster Højskole, Denmark
  Programme

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Call for Papers: Theorizing sustainability transitions and transformations

NSU Summer session 2025, July 21 – 28, Jyväskylä, Finland

Facing the increasingly severe crisis of rapid anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity loss, the need for a major societal transition to more sustainable forms of living is beyond doubt. Across different research fields, policy makers and social movements, there is a broad shared understanding that such a societal transition or transformation involves restructuring the complex socio-technical or social-ecological systems. This involves significant change to our economies, institutions, culture, technology, physical energy and resource flows, and relation to the biosphere. Furthermore, such a far-reaching transition will also have to address social justice.

This need for a societal transition or transformation invites a host of different theoretical issues that are addressed in various scholarly communities. While researchers in the sustainability transitions field are concerned with the mechanics of evolutionary change socio-technical systems, (Andersen and Geels 2023; Geels 2011; Kanger and Schot 2019; Köhler et al. 2019), other conversations focus on concepts such as socio-ecological systems (Young et al. 2006) or sustainability transformations (Child and Breyer 2017; Hölscher, Wittmayer, and Loorbach 2018). Still others focus on macroeconomic issues, such as limits to growth, steady-state or degrowth economies, challenging the established capitalistic system (Kallis et al. 2018; Kerschner 2010), including the problems of decoupling economic growth from environmental impact and the resilience of capitalism (Warlenius 2023). Neo-Gramscian political economists focus on the analysis of power in transitions (Newell, Paterson, and Craig 2021) and the literature on Just Transitions centers on issues of environmental justice (McCauley and Heffron 2018). This abundance and variety of not always linked conversations and approaches to the same common challenge raises multiple conceptual questions. Beyond academia, societal actors including policymakers, activists, private companies and civil society all embody different theories of change as they strive to enact transitions or transformations. Although these theoretical issues are discussed at length in their respective fields, there are few cross-cutting discussions about common ground, contrasts, contradictions, or complementarities.

We invite papers addressing all manner of theoretical issues related to sustainability transitions (broadly understood), with the hope to provide a forum where such perspectives can meet and interact in critical but friendly dialogue. Potential topics could be critical discussion, comparison or development of concepts or theoretical frameworks in these literatures, for example through bringing different concepts, theoretical traditions or literatures into productive dialogue. We furthermore invite empirical contributions addressing the mobilization and negotiation of transition theories by various actors, for example in governance processes or by social movements. We encourage work in progress papers and interdisciplinary work challenging established literatures and theories.

The session is a part of the Nordic Summer University (NSU) Summer Session 2025. NSU is a Nordic independent academic institution, which organizes winter and summer symposia that draw international participants across disciplines in the Nordic and Baltic regions. Focusing on crossing sectoral and disciplinary boundaries, NSU provides opportunities for participants to be challenged out of their intellectual comfort zones in a non-hierarchical space that encourages slow thinking and reflective dialogue.

Within NSU, this session is arranged by the three-year NSU study circle Act, React, and Reflect: Meta-perspectives on Climate Change Knowledge. The study circle focuses on the challenges to established forms of knowledge production posed by the need for a response to climate change. Aside from the 2025 summer session’s focus on societal transitions, we have also discussed or plan to discuss expertise, academic activism, planning and markets, denialism and obstruction, and boundary crossing. While the main topic of this session will be theorizing transitions, we also welcome submissions relating to these topics or any other that deal with challenges to established knowledge production due to climate change.

Format
The summer session will be structured around in-depth discussions of participants’ submitted papers. This NSU summer session will take place in Jyväskylä, Finland during a full week (July 21 – 28). An NSU Summer session is host to multiple parallel study circles, and participants are welcome to join other study circle’s session, and a range of cultural and social activities. Our summer session will also include a joint workshop co-organized with the NSU study circle Exnovation and Degrowth, whose summer session “Building community in the midst of collapse: organizing towards degrowth futures” takes a more practice- and social movement-oriented approach to the issue of degrowth and transformation.

Travels, accommodation and children
Accommodation (full board) is organized by NSU and included in the conference participation fee.  Information about accommodation and pricing will be available at the NSU website. For participants with children, NSU organizes a “childrens’ circle” with daytime activities for children between 3-13.

For PhD students/students/independent/early career researchers without institutional funding, a travel grant may be offered to partially cover travel costs and participation fee. NSU furthermore offers a scholarship and grant program where recipients can participate at a reduced fee. See the NSU website for details. Please indicate interest in travel grant/scholarship in your abstract submission.

ECTS credits for PhD students
Upon request, PhD students who attend the summer session and present a paper will be granted, through NSU, a letter recommending 3 ECTS credits for active participations.

Submission and important dates
Extended Deadline for abstracts:  25 April 2025

Proposals should be written in English and include title, author name(s), email, affiliation, a short bio (max 200 words) and your abstract (max 350 words). Submit your proposal by email to the coordinators: jakob.lundgren@hh.se and anders.hylmo@hh.se

Notifications of acceptance: Accepted proposals will be notified at the latest by 30 April.

Registration deadline: 15 May. Registration is done through the NSU website.

Full paper deadline: Participants should prepare to submit a full paper by July 4th. Papers may be work in progress at any stage of completion.

Coordinators

Jakob Lundgren (PhD), School of Business, Innovation and sustainability, Halmstad University, Sweden. Email jakob.lundgren@hh.se

Anders Hylmö (PhD),School of Business, Innovation and sustainability, Halmstad University, Sweden. Email anders.hylmo@hh.se

References

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About Circle 7: Act, React & Reflect: Meta-perspectives on climate change knowledge

This three-year study circle is a continuation of the successful 2024 invited circle and PhD summer school.

The aim of this circle is to explore the challenges, posed by the need to take on the multiple interlocking challenges caused by climate change, for our conventional ways of producing and thinking about knowledge. In processes ranging from the production of increasingly sophisticated climate data and modelling, through anticipatory models and governance of its societal effects, theorizing about possible and desirable transition pathways and policy measures, to mobilizations by activist as well as climate deniers, boundaries between researchers and stakeholders are being blurred and the role of science (natural and social) in society is being renegotiated.

The notion of a transition to a sustainable society raises questions about previously established roles of academic research and researchers in democratic societies. Scientific knowledge claims are not only motivating global societal transformation. Their implications have also increasingly become the subject of political debate, where an increasing number of scientists have taken on activist roles. These developments challenge an established understanding of science as non-partisan and value-free, as well conceptions of the relation between expertise, politics, and forms of governance.

This study circle aims to provide a space to reflect on this situation and the questions it raises and what it all might entail in a Nordic+Baltic and global context. We focus on the role of knowledge as it is used to ACT on climate change towards sustainable societal transitions in different context and by different actors, how REACTION is formed and organized, producing or harnessing knowledge to deny climate change or obstruct political change, and on REFLECTION on the role of knowledge production and knowledge agents in relation to climate change and sustainability transitions.

The overarching aim of the study circle is to establish and grow a Nordic-Baltic research network centered on meta-perspectives on climate knowledge. In the democratic, non-hierarchical and bottom-up spirit of the study circle, we hope to facilitate an organically growing network, linking young researchers and other actors in the region.

The format is centered on in-depth discussion of papers submitted primarily by junior scholars. In addition, we invite senior scholars and keynote speakers, as well as practitioners and stakeholders, and collaborating partners in joint workshops and outreach activities.

Six themes run through the three-year circle. We devote each session to one of these themes, while we also invite contributions focusing on other subthemes.

• Experts and expertise. The theme involves the role of experts as knowledge brokers, the role of scientists and expertise in policy processes and in the public sphere, and contested climate expertise. We further invite rethinking the role of expertise and academic knowledge in the post-truth era. For example, it is well known that a common tactic of climate deniers is to undermine public trust in climate expertise (Oreskes & Conway, 2012). At the same time, overconfidence in the ability of experts to reduce complex political questions to technical puzzles can lead to real problems of legitimacy and confidence in public policy (Wynne, 2003). Balancing between the extremes of repressive technocracy and “anything goes” post-truth, questions about the role of experts in the climate crisis connect our ideas of what knowledge and society is and should be (Durant, 2011).

• Planning, markets, and economics. The challenges invoked by the need for increasingly ambitious and radical societal transformation to meet the Paris agreement include reconsidering the role of economic growth and neoliberal assumptions (Mirowski, 2014). As increasingly highlighted both by more ambitious policies to address grand societal challenges (Kuhlmann & Rip, 2018; Schot & Steinmueller, 2018) and the degrowth literature (Warlenius 2023), and underlined by the geopolitical demise of neoliberalism, free markets and economic growth are no longer taken-for-granted primary societal goals. We invite both theoretical and empirical reflection on the role of planning and competition in the economy, the planning and governance of transition processes, and the production and use of academic economics knowledge.

• Academic engagement and activism. This theme encompasses various topics related to researchers’ use of climate science communication and its reception by various audiences, academic researchers’ modes of societal engagement (Perez Vico, 2018), ranging from policy experts and think-tank collaboration to academic activism as a mode of engagement, research communication as activism (Graminius, 2023), and the role and use of research-based knowledge of climate and transitions in social movements, labor unions and civil society (Frickel, 2004; Frickel et al., 2015; Hess, 2022).

• Climate denial and obstruction. A range of actors and movements are outright contesting climate knowledge and expertise, whether through outright denial of climate change, or through obstruction and delay of climate transitions (Oreskes & Conway, 2012). We invite reflection on theoretical and empirical approaches on epistemic engagement and contestation employed in cases of denialism, for example in social media discourse, mobilization against renewables, organized think tank campaigns, and political mobilization against transition policies.

• Theorizing sustainability transitions. We welcome contributions that address and theorize socio-technical transition processes. Topics may include critical engagement with the sustainability transitions literature (Köhler et al., 2019; Markard et al., 2012), theoretical contributions engaging with the role of data and knowledge, culture and ideology, or future visions and imaginaries in transition processes. We invite critical engagement with dominant theoretical perspectives (Geels, 2011), as well as introduction of novel theoretical and conceptual contributions to transition theory.
  
• Boundaries in knowledge production. Climate and sustainability sciences are inherently interdisciplinary fields. An increasing policy focus on grand societal challenges and “mode II” science-society interaction creates both opportunities and challenges related to construction, negotiation and contestation of epistemic boundaries (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1994; Nowotny et al. 2011). We encourage reflection on the significance of boundaries and boundary work (Lamont & Molnár, 2002) and inter- and transdisciplinary challenges in climate- and transition-related knowledge production, through issues relating to the evaluation and impact of inter- and transdisciplinary research (Lamont, 2012), to reflections on the nature of inter- and transdisciplinary climate knowledge.

ECTS credits for PhD students. Through NSU, participants in our summer and winter sessions will be granted ECTS credits for active participation (with preparation, presentation and discussion of papers). More detailed information will be provided in each sessions’ CfP.