This research investigates responses of academics to global environmental climate change. It has focused on the extent to which academics adopt a range of activisms, advocacy, activist practices and stances with the consequential opportunities, strategies and risks. Following a review of the relevant literature, sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with academics from a wide variety of countries, disciplines and at different career stages. All of those interviewed agreed that almost all researchers with whom they had come into contact, at work and personally, had a high level of concern about the current and potential impacts of climate change. They all believed that without some form of advocacy or activism by academics, responses to this challenge would be inadequate. As academics involved in advocacy or activism on climate change they reported that their actions and activities are sustained by strong personal ties and friendships with other activists and academics, rather than by their host institutions.

The personal opportunities and risks for academics who become active on climate change vary considerably based on their personal circumstances, including their country and citizen status, career stage, nature of their employment and the institution/s within which they conduct their research, family ties and responsibilities, academic discipline, workload and privilege. Academic activists understood the nature of the risks they were taking with all of them thinking quite deeply about how any advocacy or activism they may take would impact on themselves, their family, friends and institutional associations. 

It is clear from the interviews that the disciplines of academics shaped their activisms in complex ways. Despite their personal activist practices being diverse, all of those interviewed supported the principle of protest and civil disobedience because of the scale of the problem of climate change and the urgency in which governments and industry needed to take action. This research suggests that scientists can play a significant role in activist mobilisation but there is no consensus on the opportunities, strategies and risks, and a better understanding may help to determine how to achieve impactful mobilisation.

Image: Stephen Langford