Academic climate activism – navigating values, knowledge production and credibility on the border between science and society

Academic activism, understood as researchers engaged in social movements, has raised concerns in recent debates about a conflation of the values of research and politics. While similar transgressions between value domains also exist in established and well-researched practices such as academic entrepreneurship and collaboration, there is a striking lack of empirical research on academic activism.

Using an explorative qualitative approach based on interviews, ethnographic observations and document data, we focus on the research roles of academic climate activists. The empirical case consists of Swedish researchers engaged in climate movements.

We derive three research themes and ask how:

1. value conflicts are navigated,
2. research practices are affected, and
3. credibility and careers are influenced.

We draw theoretical inspiration from literature on the topics of academic engagement, sociological/STS studies of values and valuation, and sociology of science studies of social movements.

In a time of increasing questioning of the role of science in society and increasing political focus on climate change, the project will contribute with theoretically grounded and empirically rich knowledge about an important but overlooked aspect of the interaction between science and society.