Alice Vadrot at the Department of Political Science is leading the „MARIPOLDATA“ project.

Description: MARIPOLDATA is an ERC Starting Grant project with a research team led by the Principal Investigator Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alice Vadrot, which develops and applies a new interdisciplinary and multi-scale approach to study new forms of power at the intersection between science and politics. The project uses ongoing negotiations on a new international legally binding instrument under the United Nation Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) to study these processes in action.

Marine biodiversity data plays a central role: Firstly, in supporting intergovernmental efforts to identify, protect and monitor marine biodiversity. Secondly, in informing governments interested in particular aspects of marine biodiversity, including its economic use and its contribution to biosecurity. In examining how this data is represented and used, this project creates a novel understanding of the materiality of science-policy interrelations and identifies new forms of power in global environmental politics as well as develop the methodologies to do so. The central objective of MARIPOLDATA is to develop and apply a new multiscale methodology for grounding the analysis of science-policy interrelations in empirical research.

Duration: 5 years, 8 months (01.11.2018 -30.06.2024)