Vincent Gengnagel
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Dr. Vincent Gengnagel is a research associate at the Seminar for Sociology, and fellow at the affiliated "Interdisciplinary Centre for European Studies" (ICES), both Europa-Universität Flensburg, Germany. He is managing editor of the journal "Culture, Practice & Europeanization". After research stays in Harvard, Cambridge, and Lund, Sweden, he obtained his PhD in Bamberg, Germany, with a study on scientific autonomy, academic capitalism and Europeanization. Since 2020, he focuses on the interplay between climate and social policy. Working on a Political Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, he examines how disciplinary research strategies relate to the currently pressing – and necessarily interdisciplinary – challenges of climate change. Against the background of the populist polarization of socio-political discourse, his discourse analyses and focus group interviews ask: How and which scientific expertise is taken up to legitimize climate policies? How is scientific knowledge attributed and denied?
Research Interests
Europeanization, legitimacy of climate policies, social inequalities, sociology of scientific knowledge.
Metamorphoses of Law(s)? A critical exploration of planetary boundaries and their meaning for the law relating to the environment
(Collaborative project, awarded a NetIAS Constructive Advanced Thinking grant, 2021-2024)
The consequences of climate change necessitate a transition to sustainability. In the age of the Anthropocene, Earth system scientists identified in 2009 one influential way of thinking about what sustainability means in more practical terms thanks to the “planetary boundaries”. The concept refers to 9 inter-acting biophysical thresholds, considered true boundaries that must not be crossed to avoid abrupt, non-linear, potentially catastrophic, and largely unpredictable changes in the environment and on the planet. However, 7 planetary boundaries have already been transgressed. The scientists proposed a shift away from the essentially sectoral analyses of limits to growth aimed at minimizing negative externalities, toward the estimation of a “safe operating space” for human development. But how can this concept of planetary boundaries be operationalised in social sciences and law?
To explore the potential of the concept in social sciences and law, the team aims to highlight three key areas: Biodiversity & Climate Interactions, Health & the Environment, and Technologies & Science. For each issue, three critical reading grids of the law(s) relating to the environment, meaning different fields of international and national law that protect the environment, human rights law, economic law, etc., are applied, articulating the items: identification of actors, participation process and emergence of solutions. The proposed interdisciplinary project (law and social sciences) is motivated by a sense of urgency to react across all disciplines.
Key Publications
- Gengnagel, V. & Zimmermann, K. (2022). The European Green Deal as a Moonshot – Caring for a Climate-Neutral Yet Prospering Continent? Historical Social Research 47 (4): 267–302, open access.
- Special issue, edited with K. Zimmermann. 2022.Global moonshots, European responsibilities: Governance and contestation of ecosocial transformation, open access, Culture, Practice, Europeanization 7, No. 2.
- Gengnagel, V., et al. (2022): 'Closer to the Market': EU Research Governance and Symbolic Power. Journal of Common Market Studies, 60(6), 1573–1591, open access.
 Online workshop organized by the "Constructive Advanced Thinking" Research Group led by Marion Lemoine-Schonne, 2023-2024 Paris IAS Fellow |
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