Rate My Professor Viktoria Spaiser

Professor Viktoria Spaiser is Professor of Climate Politics and Computational Social Science in the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds. She holds a PhD in Sociology from Bielefeld University, Germany (2012), an MA in Conflict, Security and Development from King’s College London, UK (2008), a German Diploma in Computer Science from University of Applied Sciences Trier, Germany (2013), and a Magister in Cultural Anthropology, Sociology and Psychology. Her career trajectory includes a visiting researcher position at the Computational Social Science Research Group, ETH Zurich (2012), postdoctoral researcher roles at the Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm (2012-2014), and the Department of Mathematics, Uppsala University, Sweden (2014-2015). Joining the University of Leeds in August 2015 as University Academic Fellow in Political Science Informatics, she advanced to Associate Professor in July 2020 and to her current professorial position in March 2025. She is affiliated with the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures and the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics.

Spaiser’s research specializations include society and climate change, behavioural change, tipping points governance, climate politics, computational social science, climate movements, AI, and quantitative research methods. She employs dynamical systems modelling, agent-based modelling, Bayesian statistics, and big data analysis to investigate social and political dynamics, focusing on accelerating normative change for sustainability transitions to zero-emissions societies. She has received the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship for her project 'Understanding normative change to address the climate emergency' and served as an Alan Turing Fellow. Spaiser is Editor of The British Journal of Politics and International Relations and holds committee roles on the Fair Energy Futures Steering Committee and the Climate Plan Research Partnership Committee. Her influential publications include 'Ten essentials for action-oriented and second order energy transitions, transformations and climate change research' (Energy Research & Social Science, 2018), 'The sustainable development oxymoron: quantifying and modelling the incompatibility of sustainable development goals' (International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 2017), and contributions to the 'Global Tipping Points Report 2025'.