Staff profile

Academic Biography

I am currently an Associate Professor of Environmental Philosophy at Durham University .

I also serve as the Director of Sustainability for the Arts & Humanities as well as the Co-Director of the Centre for the Environment and the Humanities at Durham University.

My areas of research and teaching specialty are in are in political philosophy, ethics (normative and applied), as well as climate and environmental politics. Much of my work focuses on issues that intersect matters of climate justice and governance, immigration, climate adaptation, biodiversity, and social justice. A central focus of my research addresses the moral, political, governance, and institutional challenges of “climate mobilities” which refers to voluntary and forced immobility and migration including in-situ adaptation, external and internal displacement, refugee flows, and planned relocation that are influenced by climate variability, slow, and rapid-onset climate impacts. While my research is grounded in normative and political theory, I engage with and contribute to interdisciplinary research and teaching programs in the social sciences, law, and policy.

Prior to joining the Philosophy Department at Durham University I was a Research Associate at Princeton University in the Climate Futures Initiative in Science, Values, and Policy administered by Princeton's High Meadows Environmental Institute and Princeton's University Center for Human Values. Previously I held a Postdoctoral Research Fellow position in the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University where I was part of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation research cohort on Migration and the Humanities. I earned my PhD in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine in 2018 and my MA in Philosophy from San Francisco State University in 2012.

• Climate Justice
• Climate Mobility
• Environmental Philosophy
• Ethics (Normative & Applied)
• Feminist Philosophy
• Philosophy of Immigration
• Political and Social Philosophy

Journal Article

• Livability and a Framework for Climate Mobilities Justice
  
  Capisani, S. (2021). Livability and a Framework for Climate Mobilities Justice. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 11(1).
• Territorial Instability and the Right to a Livable Locality
  
  Capisani, S. (2020). Territorial Instability and the Right to a Livable Locality. Environmental Ethics, 42(2). https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics2020111816