skelton@em.uni-frankfurt.de
Short Vita
Florian holds an MA in Political Theory from the University of Frankfurt and the Technical University of Darmstadt, as well as a BA in Political Science from the University of Zurich. He is interested in environmental politics, environmental humanities, and the history of political ideas. He has also worked on democracy studies and on urban policies as a student research assistant, and spent a semester at the New School for Social Research. Before joining the RTG ‘Fixing Futures’, he was a pre-doctoral fellow at the University of Zurich’s Chair for the History of the Anthropocene and a trainee at the Swiss Federal Office of Energy.
Project Description
Over the last four decades, carbon has evolved from a natural scientific term into an object of international governance, a commodity traded on carbon markets, and a legal benchmark for litigating climate-related damages. Florian’s research project engages with this versatility of carbon, asking how carbon is shaped within and across the domains of science, policy, markets, and law. More specifically, he addresses the recent emphasis on carbon removal technologies that aim to durably remove carbon from the atmosphere. Unlike the more established approaches of carbon avoidance and reduction, these removal technologies build on forms of ‘carbon labour’ that physically rework atmospheric carbon and penetrate the Earth’s subsurface. By studying the scientific, political, economic, and legal practices surrounding these technologies, Florian maps the intricate ways in which the narrative and design of carbon removal are defined. Using the tools of document analysis, interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork, he provides thick descriptions of counterposing cases to gauge the conflicts arising from incongruent frameworks and competing interests. His project thereby probes wider questions relating to the human-carbon–relationship by understanding carbon removal as an anticipatory device of knowing and governing socio-climatic futures.