Research Areas

Below are some of the research areas I’m currently working on. Please contact me if interested in collaborating or pursuing student projects in them!

Degrowth and decolonization in universities #

Like other societal institutions, academia today is facing an existential polycrisis. Rising inequality and authoritarianism, coupled with climate breakdown and environmental collapse, are threatening the conditions under which knowledge is produced and shared around the world. At the same time, academics are coming to terms with their own complicity in contributing to this crisis. Many within higher-learning institutions are increasingly recognizing the deeply unjust historical processes behind the cultural hegemony of Western academia, but they also understand universities have a strong potentital to be actors for good in the crisis. Is there a way forward? How can academia transform into an institution that can contribute to a socio-ecological just future for all? Together with a team of social scientists, we are currently exploring strategic paths towards decolonization and degrowth in universities and other academic institutions.

Ethical publishing #

The academic journal publishing model is deeply unethical: today, a few major, for-profit conglomerates control more than 50% of all articles in the natural sciences and social sciences, driving subscription and open-access publishing fees above levels that can be sustainably maintained by publicly funded universities, libraries, and research institutions worldwide. Alternatives to this model exist and have increased in popularity in recent years, including diamond open-access journals and community-driven recommendation models. These are free of charge for authors and minimize costs for institutions and agencies, while making peer-reviewed scientific results publicly accessible. However, for-profit publishing agents have made change difficult, by co-opting open-access schemes and creating journal-driven incentives that prevent an effective collective transition away from profiteering. In a recent paper (published in the diamond open-access journal PTPBio), several scientists and I took to analyze the current state of the academic publishing system, including its most important systemic problems, and describe alternative systems. We explain the reasons why the move toward them can be perceived as costly to individual researchers, and demystify common roadblocks to change.

Academic activism #

I am currently working on an in-depth study on academic activism, to understand why more and more scientists are shifting from mere passive observers of climate breakdown, to active communicators of governmental inaction. The study is inspired by my own experiences in activism, and by a recent paper I co-authored together by several scientist-activists on the urgent need for scientists to change the way we engage with society. Though interviews, I am exploring different ways in which scientists around the world are breaking out of conventional modes of outreach, and embracing other modes that defy established rules or regulations.

Spatio-temporal genomics #

The genomes of organisms contain information about their past history: migrations, displacements and expansions of populations can be discerned from the footprints they left in genetic sequences – including our own genomes. Space is thus a crucial dimension of evolution: organisms interact, mate and compete with organisms that are closest to them in their landscape. Yet, tools for analyzing genomes in space are scarce or highly limited in scope. Which types of genetic patterns are most informative of spatial aspects of the history of a species? And how can we best harness them to better understand the movement and past distribution of those species? To answer these questions, I am working with members of my research group on an NNF-funded project to generate computational tools for simulating, analyzing and modelling genomes on real geographic landscapes. Using these tools, we are working to infer the spatial distribution and expansion of ancient pathogens and their hosts, using a combination of present-day and ancient genomic data. We are seeking to understand how past epidemics have affected human populations over the last 50,000 years, how humans – in turn – have responded to these epidemics, and how future epidemics might unfold over time, as a consequence of climate change and ecological breakdown.

Paleobiological modelling (ERC-STAMP) #

Radical changes in the Earth’s biome as a consequence of climate change will fundamentally affect human society and its relation to the natural world. How can we best model species dynamics, to make predictions for the future? What are the main drivers underlying these dynamics, and how are these changing as we enter the Anthropocene? A great compass for biotic changes we will see in coming decades is the study of changes the Earth has experienced before – from alterations in the distribution of terrestrial and marine mammals, to the dynamic changes in the range and connectivity of forests. There is now a wealth of historic and prehistoric records documenting past evolutionary processes, including pollen and fossil records, ancient genomes and sedimentary DNA. Together with members of my research group, I am working on an ERC-funded research project called “STAMP” (Spatiotemporal analytical modelling for paleobiology) to link these disparate types of paleobiological records with the methodological tools of spatiotemporal process analysis. We are focusing on three empirical research areas: 1) reconstruction of megafauna species ranges across the late Pleistocene and Holocene; 2) reconstruction of boreal paleo-forest dynamics; 3) study of the historical resilience and mobility of arctic marine mammals.