ISTP News

This semester's programme again focuses on a wide variety of disciplines related to Science, Technology and Policy. The series will start on September 29, 2021, with a talk given by Prof. Sonia Seneviratne. Sign up already today to receive an invitation.

A few weeks back, the Spring Semester 2021 ISTP Colloquium has come to an end. For every talk, Science, Technology and Policy Master's students have summarised the messages and takeaways presented by the speakers. All these reports have now been put together in a collective document. We warmly thank everyone for their great contribution!

In our final colloquium talk of this semester, Prof. Konstantinos Boulouchos from ETH Zurich's Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering will talk about a "net-zero" mobility future, and he will illustrate the synergetic contributions of technology innovation and policy design. He will also focus on the energy supply and climate change mitigation options for the worldwide and national transportation systems.

We are delighted to announce the next colloquium talk of this semester. Prof. David Bresch from ETH Zurich’s Department of Environmental Systems Science will elaborate on the challenges in reporting climate resilience and adopting the Climate-related Disclosures recommendations.

In our upcoming colloquium talk, Ph.D. student Jan Freihardt & MSc ETH STP student Romain Buchs talk about how positive or negative framing can influence humans' perception of risk messages and present empirical evidence from a series of online survey experiments exploring the effects of framing in disaster risk communication. They argue that framing might be a less powerful tool than it is commonly thought of when applied in complex real-​world settings.

In our upcoming colloquium talk, ISTP Director Prof. Thomas Bernauer, Dr. Lukas Rudolph & Franziska Quoss from the CIS present the first results from the fifth wave of the Swiss Environmental Panel focusing on 5G, the fifth generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks. They also shed light on whether consumer/citizen concern or acceptance of 5G is contingent on the location of 5G antennas and on what policies citizens prefer with respect to 5G.

In our upcoming colloquium talk, Prof. Lars-Erik Cederman, from the Center for Comparative and International Studies, investigates the influence of war on European states' territorial expansion. The starting point of his research is Charles Tilly's classical claim that "war made states." Prof. Cederman elaborates on state expansion's logic after testing the "bellicist" thesis by aligning historical data on European state borders with conflict data.

Informational self-​determination is defined as the authority of an individual to determine disclosure and use of personal data. In our upcoming colloquium talk, ETH Zurich Prof. Ulrik Brandes elaborates on the meaning and scope of this concept as well as its implications for privacy regulations. He emphasizes that the presence of social regularities may enable the inference of information about an individual without that individual disclosing any of it.

In our upcoming colloquium talk, ETH Prof. Robert Finger from the Agricultural Economics and Policy Group names key challenges for the reduction of environmental and health risks from agricultural pesticide use and presents a framework developed in collaboration with Dr. Niklas Möhring for improving current policies. He also provides insights into economics and policies on pesticide risk reduction in Swiss agriculture using selected case studies.

Adequate responses to city-​making and the production of inclusive environments are needed to tackle the segregated landscape and structural challenges in South Africa's young democracy that cannot be generated by one theoretical framework alone. In our upcoming colloquium, Anne Graupner, co-founder of 26´10 south Architects, talks about a unique mode of thinking that led to intertwining theory and practice, the co-production of knowledge and capacity building.

Our next colloquium talk will take place online on Tuesday, 13th October 2020, at 5pm. The invited guest speaker, Dr. Bjarne Steffen will talk about the role of finance in climate policy. Mitigating dangerous climate change requires a rapid transition of economies towards low-carbon technologies. Bjarne Steffen will elaborate on the interplay between interest rates and the politics of emissions trading.

Our next colloquium talk of the semester will take place online on Tuesday, 6th October 2020, at 5pm. The invited guest speaker, Prof. David Kaufmann from the ETH Zurich Institute for Spatial and Landscape Development, will give a conceptual overview over different urban policies in support of irregular migrants and he will present empirical insights from a policy survey of the biggest 95 European cities and of two case studies (Geneva: Operation Papyrus and Zürich: Züri City Card).

Our first colloquium talk for the Autumn Semester 2020 will take place online on Tuesday, 29th September 2020, at 17:15 - 18:30. The invited guest speaker, Prof. Marco Mazzotti from the ETH Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, will elaborate on several aspects related to the deployment of Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCU and CCS) systems, which play a central role in political debates, technological efforts and scientific developments around climate change.

The schedule for the ISTP Colloquium series for the Spring Semester 2020 is now available online.

Our next colloquium talk takes place at the Institute of Science, Technology and Policy on Tuesday, 24th September 2019 at 17:15 - 18:30. "High Stakes, High Hopes" reflects on a decade-long research and teaching partnership, a collaborative process through which members of a civic organization in Cape Town and Prof. Sophie Oldfield have researched the city to collaboratively build urban theory. This approach brings together multiple voices shaping urban theory in shared spaces across Cape Town.

We are happy to announce additional speakers for our colloquium seminars. The schedule for the ISTP Colloquium series for the autumn semester 2019 is now online.