is a Human Geographer with a focus on political geography, energy geographies, political ecology, environmental justice, and the coloniality of climate politics. He is Social Justice Fellow at the Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam since 2022 and Research Associate at the Centre for Advances Studies “Futures of Sustainability” at the University of Hamburg since 2019, focusing on different trajectories of sustainability and their contradictions and conflicts. He received his doctorate from the University of Kiel in 2017, where he investigated the justice dimensions of the claim for food sovereignty in the Bolivian context. From 2018 to 2019, he worked at WWF Germany as a consultant in the field of soy supply chains and sustainable animal feed.

studied Political Science and Sociology in Stuttgart (Germany) and Florence (Italy), and holds a PhD in Sociology. Her research focuses on understanding and strengthening the transformative potentials of entrepreneurship. She works as a facilitator at the international level, bringing together decision-makers and researchers in order to bridge the gap between knowledge and action.

At the RIFS, she is involved in both transformation research and transformative research that examines the efforts of entrepreneurs to become responsible actors in the eco-social-system and explores opportunities to support the co-creation of responsible solutions by entrepreneurs, policymakers and scientists.

is a Full professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Technology at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. He has been director of the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis at KIT (ITAS) since 1999 and Director of the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag in Berlin since 2002.
After university education in physics, mathematics, and philosophy, he received a PhD in theoretical Solid State Physics from Cologne University in 1987 and a habilitation at Marburg University in 1998 with a Venia Legendi in Philosophy. His research fields include technology assessment, ethics of new technologies, digitalization, theory of sustainable development, sustainability research, and the epistemology of inter- and transdisciplinary research.
In his professional work, Armin Grunwald is member of several advisory commissions and committees in various fields of the technological advance, e.g. of the German Ethics Council and the National Board on Nuclear Waste disposal. He is an author and editor of multiple professional and reseatarch publications, among them “Technology Assessment in Practice and Theory” (Routledge 2019).
More about Armin Grunwald can be found www.itas.kit.edu/english/staff_grunwald_armin.php

is a PhD Fellow in the Ethics and Philosophy of Technology section at TU Delft, in the Netherlands. In his thesis he explores the ethical and societal implications of researching (and potentially deploying) climate engineering technologies, with a specific focus on solar radiation management through stratospheric aerosol injection. Ben works with the baseline assumption that decisions surrounding such technologies will have to be made under normative uncertainty – situations wherein we lack both the epistemic and the moral information necessary to make an unequivocally acceptable decision. The session will provide a rough outline on the ethical issues surrounding climate engineering with an emphasis on the potential societal effects, drawing from a broad range of scholarship, such as ethics/philosophy of technology, political theory, and environmental ethics. Prior knowledge in any of the fields is not necessary, and Ben aims for a highly interactive and engaging talk and discussion.

Judith is a freelancing social scientist, facilitator and campaigner at the intersection of democracy and climate justice activism with a firm conviction that radical transformations are possible. Having started her career as a bank clerk, she herself has seen her life transform profoundly once she realized how severe the climate crisis is. In her current work, she is interested in individual and collective agencies in the Anthropocene and how they change as crises around the world escalate. With an intersectional approach she discovers what fears and perceptions limit our own sense of agency, meaning our ability to act in accordance with our values and our understanding of consternation and injustice. Her guiding questions are: What empowers us, what holds us back and what skills do we need in order to transform our societies?

Aliaksei (Alex) Patonia is a Research Fellow in commercial hydrogen development at the Energy Transition Research Initiative (ETRI). He joined the hydrogen module at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies after being a Visiting Research Fellow and working primarily with the Institute's Electricity Programme. As a key part of the ETRI, the hydrogen module aims to develop objective, realistic and unique insights into the challenges and opportunities of the evolving hydrogen economy.

Alex started his research at OIES as an OIES-Aramco Fellow in 2019 when he investigated the use of ammonia as a storage solution for future decarbonized energy systems. In his later research, he focused on power-to hydrogen technologies and the possibilities to reduce the cost of electrolysers - the key technology involved in the generation of 'green' hydrogen.

Apart from his work at OIES, Alex has cooperated with a number of research institutions and think tanks such as the GMFUS of Washington, DC and the EPG of Bucharest. His commentaries and op-eds appeared, among others, in the Diplomat, EU Observer, Geopolitical Monitor, Natural Gas World, Apolitical, and Petroleum Review of the Energy Institute.

is the Head of the German Arctic Office at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), which serves as an information and cooperation platform between German stakeholders from science, politics and industry. Before moving to the German Arctic Office in 2017, he served as the Executive Secretary of the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) in Stockholm and Potsdam since 2006.
Dr. Rachold graduated as a geo-chemist from Göttingen University, where he also obtained his Ph.D. in 1994. Since then he worked with the AWI. His research is focused on land-ocean interactions in the Siberian Arctic and he led several land- and ship-based Russian-German expeditions.

is a Fellow at the Research Institute for Sustainability, Helmholtz-Centre Potsdam (RIFS, formerly the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies or IASS). He is Deputy Chair of the Ocean Law Specialist Group of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law and Lead of the Commission on Ecosystem Management's Thematic Group on Deep Seabed Mining. Pradeep regularly attends multilateral ocean negotiations, including the meetings of the International Seabed Authority, and advises several governments on deep seabed mining, ocean governance and marine biodiversity conservation in areas beyond national jurisdiction. He holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, an LL.M. in Global Environment and Climate Change Law from the University of Edinburgh, and an LL.B (First Class Honors) from the University of Malaya in his home country Malaysia.

is a research associate of the transdisciplinary Research Group "Democratic Governance and Ecopolitical Transformations” (EcoPol) and part of the Focal Topic “Justice in Sustainability” Coordination team at the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS) Potsdam. She holds a MA in International Development Studies from Philipps-Universität Marburg and a BA in Political Science and Economics from Universität Potsdam.
With the EcoPol group she partakes in the research on the relationships of democracy and ecopolitics, focusing on topics such as climate change regime, environmental justice and ecopolitical trans-territorialities (rivers, forests, etc). The EcoPol group is currently working on a transdisciplinary case study in the Amazon basin. With the Justice Focal Topic she explores distributional, procedural and recognitional justice aspects of sustainability transformations.
Before joining the RIFS she worked for several years in political and technical development cooperation in Latin America. During this time, she coordinated multi-stakeholder and transdisciplinary dialogues and knowledge exchange from the local to the international level. Her work focused on sustainable development, environmental participation, social ecological transformation as well as climate policy and adaptation.