OVERVIEW
MARIPOLDATA is an ERC Starting Grant project running from November 2018 to October 2023. A research team led by the Principal Investigator Dr. Alice Vadrot develops and applies a new interdisciplinary and multi-scale approach to study new forms of power at the intersection between science, and politics. The project uses ongoing negotiations on a new international legally binding instrument under the United Nation Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) to study these processes in action.
Marine biodiversity data will play a central role: Firstly, in supporting intergovernmental efforts to identify, protect and monitor marine biodiversity. Secondly, in informing governments interested in particular aspects of marine biodiversity, including its economic use and its contribution to biosecurity. In examining how this data is represented and used, this project will create a novel understanding of the materiality of science-policy interrelations and identify new forms of power in global environmental politics as well as develop the methodologies to do so.
This is crucial because the capacities to develop and use data infrastructures are unequally distributed among countries and global initiatives for data sharing are significantly challenged by conflicting perceptions of who benefits from marine biodiversity research. Despite broad recognition of these challenges within natural science communities, the political aspects of marine biodiversity data remain understudied. Academic debates tend to neglect the role of international politics in legitimising and authorising scientific concepts, data sources and criteria and how this influences national monitoring priorities.
The central objective of MARIPOLDATA is to overcome these shortcomings by developing and applying a new multiscale methodology for grounding the analysis of science-policy interrelations in empirical research.
TEAM
Ass.-Prof. Dr. Alice Vadrot
Principal investigator
Alice Vadrot is Assistant Professor for International Relations with a focus on Environmental Politics at the Department of Political Science of the University of Vienna and Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) of the University of Cambridge.
Vadrot holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Vienna, which she completed in 2013. From 2015 to 2018, she was an Erwin Schrödinger Fellow of the Austrian Science Fund. She did her postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge and returned to Vienna as a Senior Post Doc in 2017. In 2018, she won a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). Since November 2018, she is Assistant Professor at the University of Vienna.
Her work addresses the role of knowledge and science in global environmental politics. She has conducted extensive research on the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and developed the concept of “epistemic selectivities”, which she uses to describe and understand the processes that lead to epistemic authority, legitimacy and scientific and political self-evidence in global environmental politics. Vadrot is the author of “The Politics of Knowledge and Global Biodiversity” (Routledge, 2014) and editor of several special issues, research articles and editorials.
Her ERC project develops and applies a new methodological approach for grounding the analysis of science-policy interrelations in empirical research.
www.alicevadrot.eu Curriculum Vitae Researchgate Researcher ID Orcid @AliceVadrot
Selected Publications:
Vadrot, A.B.M. 2014. The Politics of Knowledge and Global Biodiversity. London: Routledge.
Emmanuelle Brogat
Research Administrator
emmanuelle.brogat@univie.ac.at
Emmanuelle Brogat is the Research Administrator for MARIPOLDATA.
She holds a bachelor in history and a master degree in European programmes and policies.
She started her professional career in the field of research by working for the scientific department of the French Embassy of Vienna. Previously employed as an international cooperation manager in a research cluster focusing on urban research, she supported multidisciplinary research teams developing projects in the field of sustainable development.
In the MARIPOLDATA project, she is responsible for the daily operational, administrative and financial support as well as for the internal and external communication activities.
Arne Langlet
PhD student
Arne Langlet is a future PhD student in MARIPOLDATA. He is currently studying the joint Master International Relations at Humboldt University Berlin, Freie University Berlin and the University Potsdam. Throughout his studies he has visited the Universities in Maastricht, Coimbra and Sciences Po in Paris. His focus lies in international and European environmental policy and in the economy of environmental and climate policy. On a methodological level he specialized on quantitative methods and the application of network analysis on international negotiations.
Ina Tessnow-von Wysocki
PhD Student
Ina Tessnow-von Wysocki is a PhD student in the department of Political Science at the University of Vienna. She studied a Bachelor of Politics, International Relations and Asian Studies at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia and completed her Master degree in International Relations with the joint programme at Humboldt University, Freie University and University Potsdam.
Throughout her studies she gained insights into research at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) in Spain and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver in Canada. Her work concentrated on Environmental Politics and she received the German scholarship for Climate Impact Research (Deutschlandstipendium für Klimafolgenforschung), as well as funding from the “University Alliance for Sustainability“.
After her work experiences in climate and foreign policy in the German Federal Government, NGOs and think tanks, she specialised in International Cooperation on environmental issues. Her master thesis dealt with the topic of International Cooperation for the Protection of Global Public Goods regarding the problem of marine plastic pollution. Emphasis of this research was on legally binding multilateral environmental agreements and the contribution of treaty design to success and failure of international environmental regimes.
