Research
My research starts from the premise that climate change is not only a matter of distributing burdens, benefits and responsibilities according to established moral principles. Climate and energy transitions are also processes through which values, technologies, forms of knowledge, responsibilities and relationships with the environment change. I am interested in these transformations and in what they mean for how we think about climate ethics.
A central concern throughout my work is value change. Values are often approached as relatively stable starting points for ethical analysis: we identify what matters, examine conflicts between values and consider how these conflicts might be addressed. My research instead asks what happens when values themselves change: when they acquire new meanings, become interpreted differently, or extend towards new objects of moral concern.
In my work, I have developed an interpretive account of value change that approaches values as dynamic and relational rather than fixed. This provides a philosophical point of departure for my broader research on climate and technological change. From here, my research develops along four closely connected lines.
Values in transition
Climate and energy transitions do not simply put existing societal values into practice. They can also change what people value, how values are understood and the relationships through which moral concerns develop.
Rather than starting from the assumption that ethical disagreement is something that should eventually be resolved, I am interested in what it means to take value pluralism seriously. This also means considering how technological and environmental transformations can alter the moral landscape within which disagreements arise.
Technologies as sites of ethical transformation
An important part of my work brings climate ethics into conversation with philosophy of technology. Technologies tend to enter climate ethics as possible responses to an already defined problem. Renewable energy systems, infrastructures, models, artificial intelligence, carbon technologies and other interventions can then be evaluated against ethical principles or criteria. I am interested in turning this relationship around and asking: what happens when technologies themselves shape the values, responsibilities, relationships and possibilities through which we understand climate change and its possible futures?
Technological choices can make some forms of harm more visible while obscuring others. They can create new dependencies and responsibilities, privilege particular forms of knowledge, and influence which futures appear possible, desirable or necessary. This is why I think climate ethics needs to take technologies seriously not only as instruments through which climate goals might be achieved, but as part of the social, epistemic and moral considerations that would inform climate futures.
Knowledge hierarchies, epistemology and justice
Climate transitions are also shaped by hierarchies of knowledge. Scientific models, technical expertise, economic assessments and institutional forms of evidence often carry greater authority in technological and policy processes than situated, experiential, Indigenous and other place-based forms of knowledge. I am interested in what these hierarchies do: not only to participation in decision-making, but to what can be recognised as knowledge in the first place. This raises questions that increasingly run through my work: Who is recognised as a knower? Whose understanding of harm becomes authoritative? Which forms of knowledge can enter policy and technological design, and what happens to those that cannot easily be translated into their dominant categories?
These questions connect my work on epistemology, justice, non-expert knowledge and transdisciplinary research with my co-creative work and collaborations with Indigenous groups and organisations.
I do not see such encounters as a matter of simply bringing additional perspectives into already established frameworks. They can also provide grounds for questioning the categories, assumptions and knowledge hierarchies through which environmental and technological problems have been framed in the first place. This requires particular attention to power, reciprocity and responsibility. Indigenous knowledges cannot simply be treated as another body of information to be extracted and incorporated into existing technological or academic systems. Working across knowledge traditions also means being open to the ways in which different understandings of relationality, responsibility, temporality and human–environment relations can challenge the assumptions with which we began.
Philosophising with the land
This has led me towards another direction that I describe as philosophising with the land.
Climate ethics often has to operate at a high level of abstraction. We think about emissions, distributions, mitigation targets, future generations and principles of responsibility. These perspectives are important, but abstraction can also distance ethical reflection from the particular places, histories, relationships and forms of life through which environmental change is experienced. I am interested in what changes when land is not approached simply as an object of environmental concern, a resource to be governed, or the setting in which human activity takes place, but as part of the relationships through which knowledge, responsibility and moral meaning emerge. For me, philosophising with the land means allowing situated relationships with places and environments to inform not only our answers, but the philosophical questions we ask in the first place.
My collaborative work with Indigenous communities and partners has made this question increasingly important to my research. Encounters with perspectives grounded in interconnectedness, reciprocity, intergenerational responsibility and relationality can reveal assumptions embedded in dominant Western approaches to technology, nature and environmental governance.
I do not understand this as searching for a single ‘Indigenous perspective’, nor as romanticising relationships with land. Rather, it means careful considerations of the philosophical significance of different epistemic and relational traditions, and asking what becomes visible when the concepts through which climate ethics and philosophy of technology understand nature, agency, responsibility and justice are no longer taken for granted.
From this perspective, philosophy does not only speak about environmental change. It can also develop through encounters with places, communities and different ways of understanding human–environment relations.
Towards a philosophy of climate transitions
These different strands come together in what I see as a broader inquiry into transitions ethics. At its centre is a question: how should climate ethics respond when the values, technologies, forms of knowledge, responsibilities and human–environment relationships on which ethical judgement depends are themselves changing?
For me, answering this question requires more than applying established ethical theories to new climate technologies. It also requires examining how socio-ecological-technical transitions shape the moral and epistemic conditions through which climate problems are understood.
This brings climate ethics and philosophy of technology together while placing value change, knowledge hierarchies, pluralism, and relationships with the land at the centre of the inquiry. It also explains why I work across different forms of inquiry, including philosophical analysis, qualitative research, computational modelling, transdisciplinary collaboration and co-creative practices. I do not see these approaches as ends in themselves. I use them to make assumptions visible, explore different interpretations, question established knowledge hierarchies and create spaces in which different understandings of technological and environmental change can encounter one another.
Current direction
My current work develops these questions further by examining how technologies mediate climate ethics and how technological responses to climate change reshape moral, epistemic and environmental relations. I am particularly interested in how dominant technological responses privilege particular understandings of knowledge, nature, progress and responsibility, and in what becomes visible when these assumptions encounter other epistemic traditions and lived relationships with land. Across my work on climate technologies, energy transitions, environmental harm, computational methods, Indigenous and place-based knowledge, and transdisciplinary engagement, I return to a common question: what kind of climate ethics do we need when technologies, values, forms of knowledge and our relationships with the land are themselves in transition?