Hannah Axtell

During my time at Northeastern University, I had the honor of working on an intergenerational research team in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology to produce a white paper illustrating how to move beyond technocratic approaches to climate action.

Climate justice articulates a paradigm shift in how organizations think about their response to the climate crisis. This paper makes a conceptual contribution by exploring the potential of this paradigm shift in higher education. Through a commitment to advancing transformative climate justice, colleges and universities around the world could realign and redefine their priorities in teaching, research, and community engagement to shape a more just, stable, and healthy future. As inequitable climate vulnerabilities increase, higher education has multiple emerging opportunities to resist, reverse, and repair climate injustices and related socioeconomic and health disparities.

(doi: 10.1007/s10584-023-03486-4)

"Alaina Kinol, Elijah Miller, Hannah Axtell, Sophie Leggett, Yutong Si, and Jennie C. Stephens of Northeastern University and Ilana Hirschfeld of Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Climate justice in higher education: a proposed paradigm shift towards a transformative role for colleges and universities. This article explores how higher education can advance societal transformation toward climate justice, by teaching climate engagement, supporting impactful justice-centered research, embracing non-extractive hiring and purchasing practices, and integrating community-engaged climate justice innovations across campus operations."