"Facing Accelerating Climate Change Threat": A Faculty Inaugural Lecture by Professor Viktoria Spaiser

Join us for the first event in the 2025-26 Faculty of Social Sciences Inaugural Lecture Series!

We are delighted to announce that the first lecture in the 2025-26 Faculty of Social Sciences Inaugural Lecture Series will be given by Professor Viktoria Spaiser (School of Politics and International Studies).

Viktoria is a Professor of Climate Politics and Computational Social Science at the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds. She is also affiliated with the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures. Viktoria has been an Alan Turing Fellow and is currently a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. Her background is in social sciences and computer science and her research interests revolve around climate change and the societal implications, climate politics, tipping points, complex social dynamics and AI. Prior to coming to Leeds, Viktoria worked as a researcher at the Stockholm Institute for Futures Studies and the Uppsala University in Sweden.

The Lecture

Title: Facing Accelerating Climate Change Threat: Exploring Future Trajectories, Surveying the Past and the Present

Abstract:

As climate change and the wider ecological crisis escalate, while the world and social fabric continues to fracture, what does the future hold and how should we respond? In this inaugural lecture, Professor Spaiser reflects on her professional journey that is intertwined with her personal journey and starts in a state, the Soviet Union, that no longer exists, exposing her early on to the lived experience of a social system collapse. She will trace her time as a postdoc in Sweden, working with analytical sociologists and mathematicians, deriving mathematical models for social dynamics and revealing the inherent inconsistencies in the Sustainable Development Goals. She will explain how this work and her encounter with the work on planetary boundaries at the Stockholm Resilience Centre sparked her interest in climate change, that is defining her research today. Focusing on her current research, Professor Spaiser will speak of her work on Earth System Tipping Points and scenarios of cascading non-linear societal impacts that could see social and political upheaval, a lived experience from the past, that re-emerges now as a possibility of the future. She will also make links to her UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, where she examined amongst others phenoma such as ecofascism as a nascent ideology. Getting back to the original question, in the face of climate change and ecological threats, interacting with multiple other crises, what does the future hold and how should we respond? Professor Spaiser will finish her inaugural lecture with a positive note, reflecting on the other components of her research that emphasise the power of people coming together in climate movements and the finding that people can be mobilised for transformative climate action.

We would like to welcome everyone – be they colleagues, postgraduate researchers, students, alumni or visitors – to this lecture celebrating the achievement and research contributions of Professor Spaiser.

The lecture will take place on Wednesday 15 October 2025 at 16:00 in Liberty Building (Moot Court) LT (1.28) on the Western University of Leeds campus. The lecture will take place from 16:00-17:00 including introductions and a Q&A session, after which there will be a drinks reception. Registration is free of charge through Ticket Tailor.

If you have any queries about this lecture, or about the series, please direct them via email to Dr Izzy Jenkinson (Faculty Events and Communications Officer) at I.K.S.Jenkinson@leeds.ac.uk.