Bridging the rhetoric of science and activism in environmental crises

What is scientist activism?

Frederik Appel Olsen who defended his PhD thesis in December 2023, conducted at the Section for Rhetoric at the Department of Communication, is deeply interested in how scientists navigate their roles when stepping into activist spaces. His research explores how climate scientists can deploy their expertise in unconventional settings, such as street protests, to challenge both public and political inertia in addressing climate change.

Appel Olsen's academic journey began in 2020, amid a heated political debate in Denmark over "activist research" cotemporaneous with the emergence of scientist-led climate protests, such as the scientist-led movement Scientist Rebellion, which was gaining momentum with chapters opening in Denmark and around the world. This early convergence shaped his PhD project, which focuses particularly on the rhetoric of scientist activists and explores how they balance their academic roles with public advocacy.

The debate on activist research was sparked by right-wing politicians and commentators, primarily targeting scholars in fields like gender studies and religion. On the one hand, researchers were accused of activism for their perceived "woke" agendas, while on the other, scientists were engaging in direct activism, not over social issues like queer theory or Islam, but in response to the climate crisis. An often-repeated question at the time was “how can you be political when you are a scientist?” A question reflecting ingrained cultural ideas about what science and research is and is not.

Putting up a laboratory or a classroom in the street challenges the boundaries between science and public discourse. It opens new avenues for thinking about science in the Anthropocene, where knowledge claims about ecological crises are constantly contested and repurposed for political ends.

Science taking to the streets

Appel Olsen’s research has revealed how scientist activists creatively use public spaces and rhetorical strategies to draw attention to the climate crisis, and his work invites critical reflection on the trajectory of this type of activism: How can these movements best engage in the climate struggle?

Appel Olsen suggests that protests built around the visibility of scientific practices can inspire new forms of public engagement with science. Protest events that are built around placing a scientific setting somewhere unexpected, like putting up a lab or setting up a classroom in the street, can generate public conversations on the relations between science and society by stepping out of traditional spaces and into the streets.

With such a move scientists are able to bring their research directly to the public, generating debates not only about climate and environmental issues but also about the role of science itself in society.  

- It’s about more than just raising awareness. It’s about challenging the very foundations of how science is understood and used in public discourse.

Appel Olsen does not consider himself an activist in the traditional sense, although his research has brought him closer to the activist community, particularly the Scientist Rebellion movement. Reflecting on his own role, he acknowledges the complexity of working at the intersection of academia and activism:

- I find myself in an ambivalent position studying activism in a community that I am a part of.

Recognizing that maintaining a critical distance in his scholarly work is in many senses impossible as an academic studying activism in academia, he contributes to activist efforts by sharing his research insights and offering intellectual support to movements like the Nordic Scientist Rebellion. In fact, throughout his research process he has shared insights with the movement by participating in their meetings and by contributing with knowledge about protest rhetoric and the history of scientist activism.

Since the time of publication of his work, he has even noticed that the movement is starting to engage more in direct action and questioning science’s position within the climate and environmental crisis. This is something he has been calling for, while modestly adding:

- Whether my research has influenced this development is debatable.

Shaping Environmental Humanities through activist strategies

In a 2016 essay, rhetorician Phaedra Pezzullo noted that environmental rhetoric has long been a marginalized subfield. However, this has changed in recent years, and Appel Olsen sees his research contributing to this progress. The study of environmental and climate rhetoric entails much more than looking at “speeches about nature.” According to Appel Olsen it cuts to the core of how we understand the eco-crises of our time and possibly change the conditions for persuasion and identification. Essentially, climate and environmental rhetoric targets how knowledge claims about what is happening in the Earth systems are constantly contested and operationalized with an eye for how we can critically intervene in these processes in the struggle for a more just world.

This dynamic of course raises important questions about the researcher’s role in the social movements they study: Should they maintain a critical distance, or should they actively contribute to the cause they are examining? For Appel Olsen, the answer lies somewhere in between. One aspect which has been crucial for him is that research communication is not an after the fact activity where we do our research and then share our findings with the public. Especially as humanities scholars, there is an opportunity to engage publicly during the research phase in order to learn something that can be used in the final research product.

Towards an "impure stance"

As Appel Olsen points out, we have the opportunity of complicating, or even exploding, the often taken for granted sequence of “research first, outreach later.” Ultimately, Appel Olsen’s work advocates for new understandings of the relationship between science and activism. Understandings that reflect the complex entanglements of politics, knowledge, and power in the Anthropocene —a geological epoch marked by significant human impact on Earth’s ecosystems. To do so he calls for what he terms an "impure stance." A stance that recognizes how science and politics constantly co-produce one another, rather than either exist in isolation or collapsing into one another completely. This is an important insight gained from the environmental humanities, Appel Olsen argues.

By blending the rhetoric of science with environmental activism, Appel Olsen’s work contributes to broader debates about how environmental humanities can shape the future of climate action. His research not only bridges the gap between scientific research and public discourse but also offers new strategies for environmental activism.

How to counter the current stalemate?

In a more recent essay, Appel Olsen argues that radical climate and environmental movements find themselves increasingly at a stalemate. After some substantial impacts in 2019 and the years after, movements like Extinction Rebellion are now pausing to reconsider their strategies and tactics in light of the continued and disastrous political inaction on climate and environmental politics, coupled with the increasingly severe crack-down on activists by authorities.

Appel Olsen therefore urges environmental humanists to engage more proactively in questions of how to create a new momentum for climate movements. He believes that scholars are well-positioned to help movements benefit from a deeper understanding of the complex socio-political moment we find ourselves in today.

Read more by Frederik Appel Olsen

En strategisk opbrudstid for klimaaktivister | Eftertryk

Forskeroprør ved Klimaministeriet | Rhetorica Scandinavica