Why, What and How?
Why do we want you to play roles?
An important approach of this course is role-playing. Rather than just talking about different perspectives and actors, we want you to bring these actors to life and see their perspectives from their individual point of view. This brings various new challenges and difficulties, but is also fun and inspirational.
How will this work? What do you have to do?
The role plays will take place in three classes throughout the semester (specific dates t.b.d). Each role play includes several roles (for example, social scientist, economist, natural scientist, politician), and lasts for about half of the class (around 45 minutes). Each role play consists of three phases:
Phase 1: Course session before the role-play
- The role play is based on the input of the previous course session and is developed around a controversial question that is related to the perspective presented in the session.
- You will receive all necessary information about the upcoming role play: the roles involved and the question to be discussed at the end of the previous course session.
- You will form working groups that are permanent for the rest of the course:
- Group 1: Lucy, Alina, Ibolya
- Group 2: Tara, Divanshu, Marlene
- Group 3: Alyx, Sarah, Carmen, Rami
- Group 4: Mareike, Asli, Prashamsa
- Group 5: Toni, Eva, Alicja
- We assign every group to a role (several roles + one moderator) and will inform you about the distribution during classes.
Phase 2: The week before the role-play in an upcoming course session
- Define your role concretely. Though we will try to be specific, some roles have different possible definitions. For example, a journalist could be a tabloid journalist or a science journalist. Discuss your options and decide on a definition.
- Read, read, and read. Try to delve deeply into the world of your role.
- Find arguments for a reasonable position of your role in relation to the question in the upcoming roleplay. We have selected questions that allow for controversial debates and contradictory positions. Prepare for the discussion in your role group.
- Decide who will be the main speaker in the upcoming discussion. The main speaker should address the key issues and summarize the position of your role. Other role group members act as ‘support’; they are also allowed to contribute to the discussion if they think it would be of benefit, but should not overshadow the main speaker in any way (see phase 3, point 1).
- If you are the moderator, think about interesting questions or a strategy to enrich or direct the discussions.
- Read through the Discussion_rules
Phase 3: The role-play itself
- The main speakers and the moderator will engage in a discussion in class. If someone else wants to make a statement, speaking time can be requested via raising your hand. The moderator will grant you speaking time.
- At the beginning of the role-play, the moderator introduces the question and starts the role-play by asking each role group to answer the question. The debate develops around differences, similarities, or other aspects. The point is to understand both the justifications behind different perspectives, as well as the unifying ideas.
- OPTIONAL: If one of your groups wants to write a blog entry about the role play, he or she should take notes about important aspects of the debate. You can also take photos (if the subjects are okay with it, ask first!) or include other ideas in your documentation. This will be counted towards your overall participation grade.
- After 35-40 minutes we stop the actual (moderated) role play and give you about 5-10 minutes to reflect on your experiences, ideas and thoughts.
What can you do to take the most out of this experience?
- Understand, don’t just act like you do. You will get a lot more out of this if you really try to understand the arguments and perspective of your role. Aspects to consider are, for example, institutional settings, motivation, legitimisation and working ethos. Don’t think or act in stereotypes. Bring the role to life by understanding its thinking and not by reproducing your understanding of that role.
- Communicate clearly and constructively. Always be helpful and open to new ideas.
- Don’t get frustrated. This is new for all of us. Things and plans will fail and others will succeed. We are all part of this learning process.
- Ask questions!
- A role-play is a debate, not a fight. It is not about ‘right’ answers nor about finding any joint answer at all. It is about discussing and understanding different perspectives on the topic at hand. The more you let go of the idea that not finding a joint answer is a failure, the more you will learn and enjoy role-playing.
- Have fun!
This year’s role plays:
Role-Play #1 (May 7th) Imagine you are the council directing a fictional research institute dedicated to climate change: The Climate Institute (TCI). Imagine there is a national government that advocates a rollback on promoting renewable energies and increases subsidies for fossil fuels. A scientist from the NGO Scientists for Change asks the leadership of The Climate Institute to clearly take a political stance on the need to get out of coal and gas faster, rather than slower than planned. The NGO also wants The Climate Institute to call for a halt to fossil fuel subsidies and to limit the climate research footprint (less air travel to conferences, etc.). It also asks to revise the research program of The Climate Institute to take epistemic pluralism more seriously.
The leadership body of The Climate Institute consists of:
- A group of scientists who do not want to interact with the public, focus on science, and leave communication to the outreach team and policy-making to policymakers.
- A group of scientists who identify with the role of scientists as honest brokers that should not advocate any kind of values and policy directions, but lay out options for policy making.
- A group of scientists who identify strongly with the idea of transformative science, that science should help to enable socio-ecological transformation towards more sustainable ways of living.
- A group of scientists who strongly believe that the idea of epistemic pluralism should lead to a revision of the research priorities.
- A moderator team that was hired to help resolve conflicts within The Climate Institute in a civil way.
| 1 | Pure scientist | 1 () |
| 2 | Honest broker | 2 () |
| 3 | Transformative scientist | 3 () |
| 4 | Transdisciplinary scientist/epistemic plurality advocate | 4 () |
| 5 | Moderator | 5 () |
Role-Play # 2
Imagine that a disparaging article has just been published in a populist/right-wing newspaper (e.g., Die Bild) that accuses climate scientists of hypocrisy…
“Climate scientists constantly preach that we must urgently reduce emission. They make you feel guilty about your vacation because the ludicrous price of trains forced you to fly. They tell our governments to levy a carbon tax on combustion engines that punishes the very farmers that feed our country.
And yet, these very scientists fly far more often and far further than the average citizen, to attend conferences in luxurious locations, where all they do is talk.
… Somehow, they are exempt from what they preach — as if merely talking about the problem absolves them of their role in it, or as if what they do is simply too complicated to handle over video call…. If they cannot figure out a Zoom meeting, what makes them think that they can solve the climate crisis?
And if climate change is as big a concern as they claim, it’s time that climate scientists get off their high horse and lead by example.”
This year’s conference coincidentally has a special panel on global transportation emissions & will mark the beginning of a special working group on the topic, which will develop guidelines for reaching net-zero in the transportation sector globally.
The conference organizing committee sits down to discuss adopting this proposal.
| Committee Members | Group |
| Member 1: a well-established researcher from somewhere in central Europe who has avoided flying for over 10 years and firmly believes strong action is required. This researcher works in climate modelling and uses a lot of supercomputer resources. | Lucy, Alina, Ibolya |
| Member 2: a researcher from Eastern Europe who finds travel difficult due to a disability and prefers to attend by zoom. They also have colleagues who anyways find it difficult to travel sustainably compared to those from Central Europe. | Alyx, Sarah, Carmen, Rami |
| Member 3: a junior researcher from North America who does remote fieldwork, who feels that this penalizes them, and should then not just include transportation emissions, but also, emissions from other research activities (e.g., model runs). | Toni, Eva,
Alicja |
| Member 4: a researcher from Brazil (which has significant reserves of the rare earth minerals necessary for the renewable transition) that already lacks the funds to fly to conferences and has not managed to secure additional funding through a scholarship. | Mareike, Asli, Prashamsa |
| Chair of the Committee (Moderator) | Tara, Divanshu, Marlene |