Research

My research interests lie in the politics of science and technology with respect to climate change mitigation. I have a particular interest in technological strategies which are part of 'green growth' responses to climate change, including carbon removal, solar geoengineering and 'sustainable intensification' of industrial agriculture, the latter of which is the focus of my current PhD project.

Across these topics, I am interested in understanding two interrelated questions: (a) how technical and natural sciences construe the social world in which they imagine technical solutions to work, and what effect this has for the desirability and feasibility of such solutions, (b) the political economy behind practices of science and technology development - how are institutions of knowledge production shaped by vested interests and economic imperatives of the capitalist state, and what does this mean for the kind of knowledge they produce?

From this perspective, my PhD project focuses on the role of agronomic expertise in the Danish agricultural sector and its political regulation, analysing the relationship between (a) the political and economic context of institutions for agronomic research and policy advice, (b) the way agricultural sustainability is understood, investigated and the recommendations made on this basis, and (c) the implications for agricultural climate politics.