frontiers fellowship – round 1
Zuzana Vitková
Nationality
Slovak
Career-Level
Mid-Career
Host Institution
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research
Germany
Residency Project
Polar research in the context of climate change
During my stay at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) I aim to produce a science popularisation book that highlights models of climate future scenarios and monitors the ongoing changes in our oceans and ice caps. I am especially interested in their ongoing project VERTEXSO which focuses on our understanding of vertical exchange in the Southern Ocean and how its changes affect the global climate, as well as FORCLIMA that is focused on changes in Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and the AWI topics in the program Changing Earth – Sustaining our Future like biodiversity of marine and polar life, permafrost thawing or sudden warming of Antarctica.
My stories will combine hard data from the labs with on-the-field reportage elements from at least one of AWI’s polar stations and icebreakers which are bringing scientists to the areas they are researching. The book will also contain data visualizations, maps and photographs with possible collaboration with Esther Horvath who is the photographer of AWI and won the World Press Photo Award 2020.
I believe that this adventure scenery, personal stories, and motivations of individual researchers living in such remote places dedicated to science, can make hard scientific data and the concerning state of our climate easier to follow (and swallow) for the readers, facilitate their understanding and interest, and ease their climate anxiety while staying accurate in the concerning topics. It also has the potential to speak to readers who are usually not interested in these topics and raise their awareness.
I am a science reporter from Slovakia, where I work for the nationwide daily newspaper Dennik N. In total, I have been reporting about science for almost a decade. Since 2020 I am also author and host of the science podcast called N2, where I talk with scientists about their research and the perks and challenges of their academic life. Since 2021, I have been writing scripts for a TV talk show about science, called Experiment which is broadcast on the Slovak public service broadcaster, STVR. In 2023 I published a book of in-depth interviews with Slovak scientists.
I decided to apply for the FRONTIERS Residency Program because I was already looking for options on how to focus longer and more deeply on a single scientific topic. I found out about the program from the contact person for ERC grants in Slovakia, Mrs. Zuzana Reptová. As a journalist, I didn’t have experience with how to write structured project proposals and she helped me a lot with putting the proposal together.
My hosting institution is the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). The main location of the Institute is in Bremerhaven, Germany, but it also consists of several other offices and research stations located in Germany, in the Arctic and Antarctica. I found my host institution through the list of ongoing ERC projects. I wanted to focus on polar research and found several frontier research that are currently conducted at AWI.
At AWI I will be interviewing scientists working on polar and climate research. My stay will also consist of a visit at Arctic Research Base AWIPEV, which is located on Svalbard. At other institutions, I will be also interviewing behavioural scientists, who are researching hoaxes and conspiracies about climate change.
My final project is a book where I want to combine the adventurous stories of the polar scientists working on expeditions and hard data. I believe that this adventure scenery can make hard scientific data and the state of our climate easier to swallow for the readers while staying accurate in the concerning topics. Polar scientists are one of the long-term and direct eyewitnesses of climate change, so my plan is also to confront the conspiracies about climate change with their data and experiences. I hope that through this combination I will be able to get the attention even of the readers who usually don’t follow the topics about climate change and raise the awareness on the topic.