Climat and Multilateralism

This seminar is part of InDocSem, the first interdisciplinary doctoral seminar series at Sciences Po. It offers a unique space for intellectual exchange, where doctoral researchers from across the School of Research come together to explore questions that transcend disciplinary boundaries. By inviting diverse perspectives on research and fostering dialogue across fields, InDocSem encourages participants to challenge methods, blur disciplinary lines, and uncover synergies between approaches. Each session features a presenter from one discipline and a discussant from another, creating a dynamic conversation that deepens our understanding of shared topics while cultivating a vibrant and engaged academic community.

Charlotte DESMASURES

Second-year doctoral student in Political science 
at Center for International Studies (CERI)

Title: Linking climate and security? The integration of climate-related issues into a military alliance’s mandate: the case of NATO. 

Abstract: This thesis explores the multifaceted features of climatization in the framework of intergovernmental security organizations, by looking at why, and how, has NATO incorporated the issue of climate change into its mandate. It traces the sources and effects of the climatization process in conceptual, functional, and organizational terms, since the Alliance’s creation. Theoretically, this work is situated at the intersection of the sociology of international organizations, critical security studies, and historical institutionalism. Conceptually, it puts securitisation into perspective, a process that is only recent at NATO, and which is preceded by other framing processes such as scientisation, (de-)politicisation and militarisation.

Christos ZOIS

First-year doctoral student in Law, 
Sciences Po Law School PhD Program

Title: Futurity narratives in international climate change law: Deciphering the rights of 'future generations'.

Abstract: The thesis aims to discuss the role of temporality narratives, especially futurity as a legal device in international climate change law by focusing on the rights of future generations. Although conceptions of time are central in international law, constituting the environment within which it operates and being constituted in law’s effort to manage externalities, the function of time as a legal device to strengthen and reproduce specific notions, rules, and assumptions -while silencing others- has been severely under-theorised. The project aims to shed light to the assumptions underlying the concept of future generations and their rights in international climate change law beginning from the hypothesis that futurity as narrativity correlates to a legal normativity based on a modernist, heteronormative tradition which places humans above nature. Utilising conceptions of non-Western temporal spirality, queer futurities and posthuman new materialistic legalities of human-nature co-existence, the thesis aims to further scrutinise the disciplinary turn towards temporality notions in international climate change law.