Climate Action Coalition
The purpose of the Climate Action Coalition is to promote collaborative, intersectional, interdisciplinary, and impactful climate action-oriented information research within the iSchools organization.
The Climate Action Coalition will bring together researchers from iSchools focusing on climate change adaptation, climate resilience, climate justice, and climate change mitigation. The coalition will provide opportunities for sharing transdisciplinary work across iSchools and other disciplines to enrich our understanding and address climate action challenges. Furthermore, the coalition will research and disseminate ways in which our discipline can support and enable the change in organizational processes, policies, and standards that are necessary for societal, governmental, and global change to avert climate disaster. The Coalition will facilitate communication as well as foster new partnerships and ideas among these researchers through a broad range of activities including iConference sessions, online seminars, collaborative projects & research output development.
The iSchools Climate Action Coalition welcomes all members who are interested in climate action through research, education, networking, and policy advocacy. A dedicated listserv is available to members of the Climate Action Coalition to stay in touch and share opportunities.
Forming the Climate Action Coalition
With an aim to promote climate action-oriented information research and collaboration within the iSchools organization, the iSchools Climate Action Coalition was formally formed on 29 March 2023 in Barcelona during iConference 2023. The discussion to form this new Coalition was initiated in 2022 and a group of academics from different iSchools member universities joined together virtually to discuss the formation of the Coalition. It was decided that iConference 2023 would be the best platform to get insights from iSchools leaders and academics to form the coalition and identify its initial tasks to create a membership base.
At the formation meeting, iSchools past Chair Dr Gobinda Chowdhury, Executive Director Dr Michael Seadle, iSchools Chair-Elect Dr Gillian Oliver, iSchools Business Manager Slava Sterzer and Program Manager Katharina Gudat and academics from different iSchools member universities were present. The idea of forming the Climate Action Coalition was welcome at the meeting and iSchools Staff committed to support the Coalition.
Dr Khalid Hossain from Monash University, Dr Hui Chen from Central China Normal University, and Isabella Corieri from Syracuse University assumed the roles of initial chairs from the Asia-Pacific and North American regions with a decision to have more chairs from the European, African andSouth American regions.
