UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Young activists worldwide have rallied around the issue of climate change and have sought to influence adult-dominated policy decisions by staging protests and filing climate change lawsuits. Mark Ortiz, President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography at Penn State, will discuss the work of these transnational youth movements across the physical and digital spheres and the movements’ distinct visions of climate justice at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 9 in 112 Walker Building and via Zoom. Ortiz’s talk is part of the Fall 2022 "Coffee Hour" seminar series hosted by Penn State’s Department of Geography.

Ortiz received his doctoral degree in geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed his undergraduate studies in environmental politics at the University of Alabama. His research interests include youth climate movements, climate change ethics and politics, and cultural representations and imaginaries of climate crisis. He is a scholar-activist who has worked closely with climate justice movements at various scales and serves on the leadership team of the North Carolina Climate Justice Collective. Ortiz is currently developing a book project on transnational youth climate activism and the global politics of climate change that builds on his National Science Foundation-funded dissertation research.