Inge-Merete Hougaard

Key research areas: 

Political Ecology, resource rights, climate politics, negative emissions, Science and Technology Studies, state-making, politics of recognition

Research

My main research interests revolve around access to and right to land and resources, climate politics, landscape change, state-making and politics of recognition. Currently, my research focusses on climate politics and the role of negative emissions. In the project, we explore the promise that negative emissions holds for future carbon reductions, and the risk this implies in terms of delaying or deterring climate change mitigation efforts. Focussing on Scandinavia, I explore the discursive and material manifestations of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) practices, specifically biochar and industrial carbon capture and storage (CCS). Combining political ecology with science and technology studies (STS), I am particularly interested in the temporalities that are mobilised, the spatialities and infrastructures that are envisioned, the socio-technical imaginaries that tie up with state-making and national identity, as well as the way in which negative emissions are enacted. In my research, I take a qualitative approach and have experience with ethnographic methods, interviews, participatory observations, document reviews, surveys, as well as audio-visual methods.

Link to the research project: Tradeoffs between negative emissions and near-term emissions reductions?