Research

Climate change requires drastic social change, and fast, concerted political action. Climate change also raises questions about how we define environmental and climate justice, and how to center marginalized voices in any political and economic transition. In my research, I investigate these questions from the bottom up. Applying a movement-centered lens, my research investigates the role youth climate movements play in defining climate justice and promoting political change.

In addition to the book project, I have broader interests in contemporary political thought, as well as political theology. I am particularly interested in how religion and spirituality have been used to legitimize and delineate political authority. In examining these questions, I am interested in reconceptualizing the agency-structure debate in political theory and developing a more dynamic model which recognizes the symbiotic interaction individuals have with their environment. 

Book Projects

Climate Justice, Movements, and Political Change (in progress)

The book assesses the potential for movement-led political and social transformation and rethinks what critical institutional engagement at a time of climate crisis should look like. Bringing critical theory and environmental political theory into dialogue with the political science of parties and movements, the book recenters an important discussion that has fallen out of political theory: it demonstrates that youth climate movements, such as Fridays For Future, Extinction Rebellion and the Sunrise Movement, not only facilitate system-immanent critique of existing institutions, but translate their demands into political change on the local, national and global level through their interaction with parties and the state. Thereby, movements indicate not only how institutions ought to be changed, but also how they could be changed.

A full abstract and sample chapters are available on request.  

Climate Justice Now! - Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Climate Crisis, eds. Rebecca Marwege, Nikhar Gaikwad and Joerg Schaefer (under contract with Columbia University Press).

Together with my colleagues Nikhar Gaikwad and Joerg Schaefer, I am currently editing a book that calls for more multidisciplinary research on the climate crisis and brings together perspectives from across the humanities, social and natural sciences. The book is under contract with Columbia University Press and is set to be published in spring 2025.

A full abstract is available on request.

Article

“Hobbes’ God is Hidden and Idle”, Political Theology 23.8 (2021): 768-781. DOI: 10.1080/1462317X.2021.1970091

This article investigates Hobbes’ contradictory references to God, and argues that these can be resolved if viewed through the lens of two prominent conceptualizations of God – the reformist hidden God (deus absconditus) and the Epicurean idle God (deus otiosus). Contrary to scholars who argue that Hobbes’ God does not exist by nature and only comes into being through his representees, I argue that in the Leviathan, God may be incomprehensible or idle, but that God exists prior to their representees. With this characterization, Hobbes manages to assert God’s ultimate supremacy and challenge the authority of the Church while simultaneously reinforcing the necessity to submit to the sovereign. 

Working Papers 

“Post-Politics, Movements and Climate Justice” (Under Review)

This paper scrutinizes the post-political critique of environmental movements and argues that it obscures the contribution movements make to repoliticizing the concepts of environmental and climate justice. I demonstrate that environmental and climate movements pursue a “symbiotic approach” that combines individualist moral and structural approaches to demand political transformation to address climate change. Thus, I argue that movements not only politicize the issue of climate change but show a way out of the technocratic reform versus revolution impasse. More generally, this paper cautions against radical status-quoism and makes a case to assess and analyze the potential for political and social transformation from the bottom up. 

“Prayer and Protest: How Climate Movements politicize Spirituality” (In Progress)

This paper investigates the political role of references to spirituality by new environmental movements and argues that these extend the scientific focus of environmental demands. I demonstrate that movements’ reference to spirituality challenges the modern conception of the environment as a resource for exploitation, and emphasizes the transcendental value of the environment and humans’ place in it.  

Drafts of the working papers are available on request.

Book Review

“Eco-Emancipation: An Earthly Politics of Freedom. By Sharon R. Krause. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press”, Book Review, Constellations (forthcoming)

Public Scholarship

“Una respuesta Meliana a Mearsheimer”, Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica, 2022. https://revistafal.com/una-respuesta-meliana-a-mearsheimer/

"Notas sobre las teorías de la conspiración”, Revista Común, 2020, https://www.revistacomun.com/blog/notas-sobre-las-teorias-de-la-conspiracion

“Las manos invisibles de la pandemia en Nueva York”, Revisa Común, 2020, https://www.revistacomun.com/blog/las-manos-invisibles-de-la-pandemia-en-nueva-york

“La voluntad pública y su papel en las elecciones presidenciales mexicanas”, Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica, 2018, http://revistafal.com/la-voluntad-publica-y-su-papel-en-las-elecciones-presidenciales-mexicanas/