Recording of Aaron Thierry: The Cassandra Condition: Climate Scientists and the Weight of Knowing
On Thursday 10th September, the Climate Justice Universities Union and Trinity’s School of Psychology hosted activist, researcher, and double-PhD, Dr Aaron Thierry.
Dr Thierry recently completed a PhD in Cardiff University's School of Social Sciences, having previously earned a doctorate in ecosystem ecology. His shift into social science followed from a growing interest in the institutional drivers of the climate crisis. His research examines how scientific knowledge is produced and acted upon under conditions of ecological emergency and asks what universities and researchers owe the public in a crisis. He also works to support engaged scholarship and academic activism. His voice was one of twenty featured in the recent book Scientists on Survival: Personal Stories of Climate Action. He is now a research analyst at ASRA.
Dr Thierry delivered a talk on his doctoral research - The Cassandra Condition: Climate Scientists and the Weight of Knowing and has graciously agreed for the talk to be shared here.
In this talk, Dr Thierry presents findings from a reflexive thematic analysis of interviews with climate scientists across a spectrum of engagement with the climate emergency movement, exploring how they make sense of the crisis they study and how they navigate the gap between understanding and action. The research develops the concept of the Cassandra condition and asks uncomfortable questions about scientific neutrality and advocacy, questions that are personal as well as professional for Earth-system scientists working at the boundary between knowledge production and planetary crisis.
In addition to his contribution to Scientists on Survival: Personal Stories of Climate Action, Dr Thierry has co-authored several papers addressing the role and responsibilities of universities and academic communities in our climate emergency:
Perrin, A. J., Capstick, S., Elliott, T., Knapp, P., Thierry, A., Wyatt, T. D., & Gardner, C. J. (2025). How scientists can contribute to the social movements essential to protecting climate and nature. npj climate action, 4(1), 72. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-025-00268-9
Wyatt, T. D., Gardner, C. J., & Thierry, A. (2024). Actions speak louder than words: the case for responsible scientific activism in an era of planetary emergency. Royal Society Open Science, 11(7), 240411. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.240411
Thierry, A., Horn, L., Von Hellermann, P., & Gardner, C. J. (2023, October). “No research on a dead planet”: preserving the socio-ecological conditions for academia. In Frontiers in education (Vol. 8, p. 1237076). https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1237076
Capstick, S., Thierry, A., Cox, E., Berglund, O., Westlake, S., & Steinberger, J. K. (2022). Civil disobedience by scientists helps press for urgent climate action. Nature Climate Change, 12(9), 773-774. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01461-y