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CALENDARS Project

Project team

Below you'll find presentations of CALENDARS' project team members.

A collage of pictures of eight people - six men and two women
From top left: Scott Bremer, Elisabeth Schøyen Jensen, Simon Meisch, Arjan Wardekker, Mathias Venning, Kerstie van Zandvoort, Paul Schneider and Mark Thomas Young.
Photo:
From top left: Andreas Magugliani, Janne Bjorheim Bøe, Lotte Ostermann, Jan Willem Wardekker, Mathias Venning, Mike Zandvoort, Daniella Suess, Ane Straume

Main content

Scott Bremer is the coordinator and project leader of the CALENDARS project. Bremer's current work focuses on climate adaptation governance, with a focus on how science and other knowledge systems are used to support adaptive decisions and actions in institutions. In CALENDARS, Bremer wants to uncover the often overlooked influence of cultures on seasonal patterns of thought and action.

Elisabeth Schøyen Jensen is the Bergen-based PhD candidate of the CALENDARS project. Her background is in Sociology and Science and Technology Studies and she has previously worked at CICERO – Centre for International Climate Research.

Simon Meisch is a an interdisciplinary social scientist at the University of Tübingen and the University of Bergen, leading a sister project; the Marie Curie-funded CANALS project: "Changing Water Cultures’ (Grant ID 895008). Current understandings of water, climate, and infrastructures struggle to address emerging uncertainties due to climate change, and a proper regard for groups cultures is required for shaping adaptation. CANALS will make visible the spectrum of knowledges and practices used by different social groups for maintaining infrastructures for their activities – whether it is infrastructures against urban flooding in Germany, or beekeeping practices in Norway.

Arjan Wardekker is an interdisciplinary environmental scientist (social science, plus natural & humanities) with 17 years of experience and a dual career in both academia and in the science-policy interface. His work focuses on ‘Urban & Community Resilience and Climate Adaptation under Uncertainty’, with applications in global cities, delta regions and the Arctic. Key topics include: framing & narratives, science-policy-society interfaces, visualisation & communication, governance under uncertainty & surprise.

Mathias Venning is a Bergen-based PhD candidate working at the Norwegian Research Centre. His background was in post-colonial history, before moving into Development and Health Promotion with a focus on food security in sub-Saharan Africa. His PhD project combines this past experience and seeks to unpack the historical development of seasonal agricultural climate services, or climate information for decision making, in East Africa. The aim then, is to integrate different knowledge systems and ask what these services should look like in the future.

Kerstie van Zandvoort is the Coromandel-based PhD candidate of the CALENDARS project. Her background in the natural sciences has been applied to two decades of working in practice as a consulting Landscape Architect & Environmental Planner. Being based on the Coromandel Peninsula for the last seven years, Kerstie has acquired detailed insights to understanding the local socio-ecological landscapes of which it is comprised, while becoming increasingly aware of the immediate and future challenges they face in the context of global climate change.

Paul Schneider is the postdoctoral researcher of the CALENDARS project based on the Coromandel Peninsula. Schneider's research background is in climate change adaptation, coastal risk, and resilience governance. The social and physical setting of the Coromandel Peninsula, where he lives and works, has been a key aspect of his research for close to a decade.

Mark Thomas Young is a philosopher leading a sister project - the Marie Curie-funded HAAA Project: ‘How Artifacts Acquire Agency’ (grant ID: 897827) - at the University of Vienna. Automation has traditionally been understood as technology which operates without human involvement. However, recent work has revealed how automating technologies actually depend on a wide variety of human practices that are often hidden from view, and can have a seasonal rhythm. HAAA aims to a) identify the different forms of human agency upon which automating technologies depend, b) explore the processes by which they come to be hidden from view and c) examine ethical concerns surrounding their erasure.