Visiting from the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), November 18, 2024 to November 17, 2025.

I am a human geographer and critical migration scholar interested in the political, cultural, and epistemological controversies arising from growing concern about climate change’s impact on human mobilities. I situate my work broadly within mobilities studies, social sciences of climate change, and geographies of knowledge. My PhD research (2018-2022) focused on how knowledge about climate mobilities is produced, debated, and communicated across academia, government, civil society, and the news media in France, allowing me to identify conceptual and political obstacles hindering action on climate mobilities. I am particularly interested in the challenging work of translating knowledge between the worlds of academia, development practice, and policy-making, especially through non-conventional or creative means like “serious games” and interactive workshops.

Recent projects in my Senior Researcher role at UNU-EHS have included, since 2023:

• Co-managing a GIZ-funded research communication and stakeholder-engagement project on “Improved management of internal migration in the context of climate change in host communities in northern Madagascar.”
• Designing, with the Centre for Systems Solutions, a social simulation about planned relocation decision-making. This sort of serious game will be a tool to help policymakers, funders and non-governmental organisations who may (or will) assist communities in their relocation decision-making and planning, but are currently unfamiliar with the challenges involved.
• Reviewing the grant portfolio of the Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF) to gather insights on what makes effective funding for climate mobilities projects.
• Convening a 2-week “Climate Academy” on planned relocation (the collective movement of a whole village or neighbourhood out of “at-risk” areas, to reconstitute conditions of life elsewhere), bringing experts from around the world to work together on this topic.

I am also a co-convenor of the Environmental and Climate Migration Network’s workstream on “Media representations, narratives and visual aesthetics” and co-editor of “A Critical Climate (Im)mobilities Glossary” special paper collection in Climate & Development. I have had various advisory roles, including currently for an upcoming documentary film about Fijian youth experiences of climate change, and as a member of the Platform on Disaster Displacement’s Advisory Committee.

Prior to all of this, I worked as an analyst for the United Nations Sustainable Development Network (SDSN). In this role and among other responsibilities, I collected and analysed SDG progress indicators for the first two editions of the network’s flagship Sustainable Development Report (2015/2016). From 2015 to 2018, I also volunteered for Réfugiés Bienvenue, a then-new Paris-based charity that today still provides housing to homeless asylum seekers. As president of Réfugiés Bienvenue (2017-2018) I worked with the wider volunteer team to expand housing opportunities and formalise mediation processes.

2024

Durand-Delacre, D. (2024) How does knowledge move? Investigating the epistemic mobilities of climate migration with diverse conceptual metaphors. Mobilities, 1-17  https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2024.2328221

Gini, G., Piggott-McKellar, A., Wiegel, H., Neu, F., Link, A.-C., Fry, C., Tabe, T., Adegun, O., Wade, C., Bower, E. R., Koeltzow, S., Harrington-Abrams, R., Jacobs, C., van der Geest, K., Zivdar, N., Alaniz, R., Cherop, C., Durand-Delacre, D., Pill, M., … Yee, M. (2024). Navigating tensions in climate change-related planned relocation. Ambio. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-024-02035-2

Durand-Delacre, D., van Schie, D., Anjum, H, Weru, K., Link, A-C., Oakes, R., Thalheimer-Prezyna, L. & van der Geest, K. (2024). Effective Support for Communities Experiencing Climate Mobilities: Lessons from the Climate Justice Resilience Fund grant portfolio (2017–2024). Climate Justice Resilience Fund. https://collections.unu.edu/view/UNU:9743

2023

Durand-Delacre, D. (2023). Obstacles to action on ‘climate migration’: a story of persistent analytical and political ambiguity. In C. T. M. Nicholson & B. Mayer (Eds.), Climate Migration: Critical Perspectives for Law, Policy, and Research. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. 10.5040/9781509961771.ch-005

Durand-Delacre, D. (2023) Epistemic mobilities of climate migration: a French case study. PhD Thesis. University of Cambridge. 10.17863/CAM.93511

2022

Durand-Delacre, D. (2022) (Mis)representing Climate Mobilities: Lessons from Documentary Filmmaking. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(14), 3397-3415. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2022.2066260

2021

Lietaer, S. & Durand-Delacre, D. (2021) Situating ‘migration as adaptation’ discourse and appraising its relevance to Senegal’s development sector. Environmental Science & Policy 126, 11-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2021.09.008

Durand-Delacre, D., Bettini, G., Nash, S. L., Sterly, H., Gioli, G., Hut, E., Boas, I., Farbotko, C., Sakdapolrak, P., de Bruijn, M., Furlong, B. T., van der Geest, K., Lietaer, S., & Hulme, M. (2021). Climate Migration is about People, not Numbers. In S. Boehm & S. Sullivan (Eds.), Negotiating Climate Change in Crisis. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0265.06

2019

Boas, I., Farbotko, C., Adams, H., Sterly, H., Bush, S., Geest, K. van der, Wiegel, H., Ashraf, H., Baldwin, A., Bettini, G., Blondin, S., de Bruijn, M., Durand-Delacre, D., Fröhlich, C., Gioli, G., Guaita, L., Hut, E., Jarawura, F. X., Lamers, M., … Hulme, M. (2019). Climate migration myths. Nature Climate Change, 9(12), 901–903. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0633-3