Could you please introduce yourself?
“Hi, I am Niklas Wagner, I am 27 years old and graduated in 2019 with the first batch of around 30 PPE students.”
Which tracks did you take?
“I did the internal Honours program and hence was able to do most of the electives, which I really enjoyed.”
Where did you go on exchange?
“I went to the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research in Mumbai, and studied, among others, environmental economics and Indian history there. Next to the courses, I think I learned even more by just being outside in India. Living in the Global South and experiencing stark inequality there shaped my later career.”
What are you currently doing, and where?
“I am a junior researcher and doctoral candidate at the Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn. I am employed in a project called “One Health and Urban Transformation”. My PhD has the working title “Legitimate Knowledge Policy Co-Production for Fostering Equitable Climate Action”. Within this project I have been analysing the creation process of urban climate action plans in four cities on four continents - last year, I lived for 3 months each in São Paulo (Brazil), Accra (Ghana), Bonn (Germany), and Ahmedabad (India) to do fieldwork, which was really exciting. A fun fact might be that for my theoretical paper of the PhD I also used political science literature on legitimacy, which I first encountered during the European Union elective of PPE.”
What did you do between PPE and now?
“After PPE I did an MPhil in environmental policy at Cambridge University, then two internships in German development corporations and then I started my PhD in Bonn. During my bachelor’s thesis, I started being active in the climate activism movement, including attending the international climate conferences, which shaped me and my career. My bachelor’s thesis was on responsibility for climate funding, so it was a real PPE work including philosophy and political science.”
What was your favourite course in PPE?
“I really loved a lot of courses. What surprised me the most was Philosophy of Science, which I took as an optional course. Right now it is definitely one of the courses which is most related to my PhD.”
What advice would you give to yourself when you were in PPE?
“Enjoy every moment of these studies, it passes very quickly! It was one of my favourite times in my life. Next to that, never stop to critically reflect on the curriculum, which was quite Western and shaped by Global North scholars. There are more forms of knowledge than scientific knowledge, and most of the world lives in the Global South, which is why I use the term “majority world”, an expression used by M.S. Alam, to remind us that we in the West are living in the “minority world”. And last but not least, something that nobody told us - use a reference manager like Zotero! I regret not having done that during PPE to keep track of all the interesting papers we read that are now lost somewhere in one of my Drive folders.”
How are you still connected to the people from PPE?
“With some I am friends, so I see them for different activities, some I see when I am in Amsterdam, and I have recently been to the VU for a conference, so I went to the fourth floor and had a coffee with Roland. I had a drink with Akshath as well, and I am hoping to join the next reunion of my year, as I wasn’t able to attend the last one.
What are your plans for the future?
“For now I am going to stick to academia, so I am searching for postdoc opportunities where I can continue to create synergies between my climate activism and my research.”