Congratulations!Inga Janina Sievert successfully defended her doctoral thesis

6. Dezember 2024

Foto: Janina Hanke

We are proud to announce the successful disputation of our CLICCS B1 team member Inga Janina Sievert.

Her dissertation “Auf dem Holzweg Richtung Zukunft? Eine Ethnographie über das Erleben von Wald- und Klimawandel im Harz” was supervised by Prof. Dr. Michael Schnegg (Social and Cultural Anthropology) and Prof. Dr. Simone Rödder (Sociology). Inga’s work was carried out in the Cluster of Excellence “Climate, Climatic Change, and Society” Project B1, “Social Constructions of Climate Futures”.

Inga's doctoral thesis, based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Harz Mountains (March 2021–May 2022), explores how local actors experience and interpret forest and climate change while envisioning the future of the forest amidst advancing anthropogenic climate change. She reveals the existence of diverse "forest worlds," where contrasting ways of experiencing the forest lead to differing explanations of its decline. This multiplicity not only fosters conflict but also shapes whether the forest's state is seen as a crisis or an opportunity. Inga demonstrates that while media narratives often focus on climate change as the primary cause, her participants offer a more nuanced, multicausal understanding of forest dieback. This perspective explains seemingly contradictory reactions and highlights why many locals remain hopeful about the forest's future.

Well, done, Inga!