Teaching
The Institute of Philosophy regularly offers courses which address questions of climate change from the perspective of philosophy of science and ethics.
This Fall semester 2025:
The following courses are offered every Spring semester:
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Proseminar Klimakrise: Philosophische Perspektiven auf ein zentrales Nachhaltigkeitsproblem
See KSL
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Seminar Philosophical Issues in Modelling Climate Change
Lecturers: Vincent Lam, Stefan Brönnimann, Julie Jebeile
See KSL
Research: projects and interests
The institute collaborates with the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research.
Julie Jebeile is leading the research project Climate Change Adaptation through the Feminist Kaleidoscope -- Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Climate Science funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Her project aims to employ the recommendations from feminist epistemologies in order to investigate how climate change adaptation information can meet the needs of stakeholders in a reliable but also a fair way. Her research interests include mathematical modelling, scientific expertise, Indigenous and local knowledge, as well as socioeconomic and ethical values in science with a special focus on climate science. Her contributions to the philosophy of scientific models and computer simulations and to the philosophy of climate science can be found here.
Hannah Hilligardt is a postdoc in the project Climate Change Adaptation through the Feminist Kaleidoscope. Her research focuses on issues related to science and democracy, values in science and philosophy of climate science. She is currentlyworking on values in communication on climate tipping points and questions related to activist scientists. To contribute to these debates, she combines resources from philosophy of science with resources from political philosophy. You can find more info on her work here.
Sapna Kumar is a PhD student in the project Climate Change Adaptation through the Feminist Kaleidoscope. Her research focuses on Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ knowledge in climate change adaptation. For that, she focuses on the relationship between Indigenous knowledge and climate science, the role of Indigenous peoples in political spaces and global institutions, with a focus on oppression, injustices and resistance in this very context.
Futura Venuto is a PhD student in the project Climate Change Adaptation through the Feminist Kaleidoscope. She is interested in understanding the role of science within society and trying to answer the question of what good science is. Currently, she is exploring the role that uncertainty, values, and beliefs play in implementing courses of action that aim to respond to the climate crisis, contributing to debates on the uncertainty evaluation and communication of climate models’ projections and climate scepticism as an instance of illegitimate dissent.
Activities of the project group:
The online seminar series in Feminist Philosophy of Climate Change, organized by Sapna Kumar and Futura Venuto, explore how feminist perspectives can inform our understanding of climate change, focusing on themes such as values, trust, uncertainty, injustice, diversity, and emotions.
Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science are fields which have reflected on the way power imbalances shape knowledge production for decades. Yet, these resources have only rarely been applied to climate research. In the “Feminist Perspectives on Climate Research" workshop, we aim to bring together scholars from philosophy of climate science, feminist philosophy and climate researchers who are interested in and reflect upon the intersections between these different literatures.
In the “Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science” seminar, in Fall 2024, we explored the multiple ways power imbalances and dominant biases shape knowledge and may undermine the expertise of groups that have been and are historically underrepresented in science, and study notably how traditional concepts such as objectivity and truth have been revised in feminist epistemology and philosophy of science.
Claus Beisbart is interested in the epistemology of climate models, the relationship between climate scientists and the public sphere and in foundational issues in climate ethics.
Recently completed projects:
- Vincent Lam led the research project The Epistemology of Climate Change funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and hosted at the Institute of Philosophy and at the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research. His group investigated the methodological and epistemic foundations of climate science and climate modelling using the tools of philosophy of science in view of addressing the climate challenge. The research group also had strong interests in broader philosophical issues related to the climate and environmental challenges. For research activities, seminars and more information on the project see philoclimate.ch.
- Mason Majszak completed his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Vincent Lam as part of the research project The Epistemology of Climate Change. In his dissertation, he examined the role of expert judgments in climate science. His further research interests include philosophy of science, probability theory, and scientific methodology.
- Handbook on the validation of simulations coedited by Claus Beisbart. Includes articles about climate simulations.
- PhD thesis by Tanja Rechnitzer on the justification of precautionary principles in climate ethics.
