About Us Alejandra Irigoyen
Alejandra is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Chemistry and Earth Sciences, supervised by HCIAS Jun.-Prof. Dr. Rosa Lehmann. In her research, she examines how urban climate governance is shaped in the Global South, with a particular focus on Chile. Her work explores the role of local governments in responding to climate change and advancing transitions toward more sustainable urban systems. By combining literature review with qualitative engagement with institutional actors, she investigates how municipalities integrate climate change into their local agendas, highlighting both the strategies they develop and the structural constraints they face. This approach provides insights into multilevel governance dynamics and the tensions between local priorities and national frameworks.
She also studies how municipalities participate in international networks and collaborative initiatives, exploring the opportunities and challenges of such engagement in shaping local climate action. Her research additionally addresses the implementation of urban carbon reduction policies, examining how institutional, political, and economic factors shape pathways toward low-carbon urban transitions.
Alejandra holds a diploma degree in Sociology from Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia, and a Master of Science in Sustainability, Society and the Environment from Christian-Albrechts-Universität (CAU) in Kiel, Germany. She worked as a project assistant at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR) within the project Baltic Gender. During her master's studies, she participated in a project focused on human-environmental interaction at the Institute for Ecosystem Research at CAU Kiel.
Alejandra has also worked as a researcher at Heidelberg University in projects including The Public Negotiation of Justice in Transitions to Sustainability (JuTSy) and PCG – Interacting Actors in Polycentric Climate Governance, funded by the Heidelberg Center for the Environment, gaining experience in collaborative research on climate governance and sustainability transitions.
Completed Research Projects
-
The Public Negotiation of Justice in Transitions to Sustainability (JuTSy): Alejandra was a researcher for the project The Public Negotiation of Justice in Transitions to Sustainability (JuTSy). The project is particularly interested in the public negotiation of justice in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), a region affected by climate change and pursuing decarbonization policies. The project builds on an interdisciplinary analytical framework, that combines knowledge from human geography, communication science, and political science to further our understanding of how societies negotiate just transitions and how politics both controls and responds to this public negotiation. While a geographical perspective pays attention to how perspectives on justice might differ according to spatial scales, communication research offers insight to understand how transition processes are communicated and framed. Political Science, in turn, helps us to understand what citizens perceive as just and what tenets (procedural, distributive, justice as recognition) are given priority to. The project started in March 2024 and is seed-funded for two years by the Heidelberg Center for the Environment (HCE) within the framework of the Excellence Strategy put forth by the German federal and state governments.
- PCG - Interacting Actors in Polycentric Climate Governance: Alejandra was a researcher for the project PCG - Interacting Actors in Polycentric Climate Governance (funded by the Heidelberg Center for the Environment). This project aimed to understand how transnational forums established in recent years to address climate change affect the discussion, selection, and convergence of climate change policies. To achieve this, we examined the policy preferences and perceptions of different groups of actors (bureaucrats, civil society actors, and business actors) in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, determined the impact of cross-level learning on policy convergence, and examined the representation of included and excluded actors.
Recent Publications
Table
|
Conference Participation
Toward a Just Transition: Current Debates and Negotiations Around Just Energy Transition in Chile
HCIAS research associate Alejandra Irigoyen participated and presented results representing the JuTSy project at the CEISAL 2025 conference in Paris on June 3, 2025.
Climate Change, Energy Transition, and Geopolitics
Between May 21st and May 23rd, HCIAS research associate Alejandra Irigoyen Rios chaired the panel Climate Change, Energy Transition, and Geopolitics at the XII NOLAN CONFERENCE organized by the University of Copenhagen. The conference offered a large interdisciplinary forum for researchers working on Latin America in the Nordic countries and beyond. This year´s main theme was rethinking the relationship between the Latin American and Nordic regions regarding both the close dialogue in social and humanistic thought and the exchange of practical expertise.
Contact
Alejandra Irigoyen
Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies | HCIAS
Brunnengasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg
Email: alejandra.irigoyen(at)uni-heidelberg.de
Phone: +49 (0)6221 54 19328