About Us Alejandra Irigoyen
Research Associate
Alejandra Irigoyen is a researcher for the project “The Public Negotiation of Justice in Transitions to Sustainability (JuTSy)” funded by the Heidelberg Center for the Environment (HCE). She is also a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Chemistry and Earth Sciences, supervised by HCIAS Jun.-Prof. Dr. Rosa Lehmann.
Her dissertation project “Local Governments and Climate Governance in Chile: Interrelations of Global, National and Local Scales Around Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies” examines the interrelations and arrangements across different scales, as well as the role and strategies of Chilean municipalities in climate governance schemes.
Alejandra holds a diploma degree in Sociology from Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia, and a Master of Science in Sustainability, Society and the Environment from Christian-Albrechts-Universität (CAU) in Kiel, Germany. She worked as a project assistant at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR) within the project Baltic Gender. During her master's studies, she participated in a project focused on human-environmental interaction at the Institute for Ecosystem Research at CAU Kiel.
Research in Progress
Alejandra is a researcher for the project The Public Negotiation of Justice in Transitions to Sustainability (JuTSy): The project is particularly interested in the public negotiation of justice in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), a region affected by climate change and pursuing decarbonization policies. The project builds on an interdisciplinary analytical framework, that combines knowledge from human geography, communication science, and political science to further our understanding of how societies negotiate just transitions and how politics both controls and responds to this public negotiation. While a geographical perspective pays attention to how perspectives on justice might differ according to spatial scales, communication research offers insight to understand how transition processes are communicated and framed. Political Science, in turn, helps us to understand what citizens perceive as just and what tenets (procedural, distributive, justice as recognition) are given priority to. The project started in March 2024 and is seed-funded for two years by the Heidelberg Center for the Environment (HCE) within the framework of the Excellence Strategy put forth by the German federal and state governments.
The Public Negotiation of Justice in Transitions to Sustainability (JuTsy)
Completed Research Projects
Alejandra was a researcher for the project PCG - Interacting Actors in Polycentric Climate Governance (funded by the Heidelberg Center for the Environment): This project aimed to understand how transnational forums established in recent years to address climate change affect the discussion, selection, and convergence of climate change policies. To achieve this, we examined the policy preferences and perceptions of different groups of actors (bureaucrats, civil society actors, and business actors) in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, determined the impact of cross-level learning on policy convergence, and examined the representation of included and excluded actors.
PCG - Interacting Actors in Polycentric Climate Governance
Recent Publications
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Conference Participation
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Contact
Alejandra Irigoyen
Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies | HCIAS
Brunnengasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg
Email: alejandra.irigoyen(at)uni-heidelberg.de
Phone: +49 (0)6221 54 19328