Associate Professor
Department of Knowledge Integration
Cross-appointments:
- Geography and Environmental Management
- School of Environment, Enterprise and Development
- School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability
- Systems Design Engineering
Faculty, Balsillie School of International Affairs
Member, Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation
Member, Waterloo Climate Institute
Fellow, Cascade Institute, Royal Roads University
Contact information:
Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 45106
Office: Environment 1 (EV1), room 211
Email: vanessa.schweizer@uwaterloo.ca
Degrees:
- PhD Engineering and Public policy, Carnegie Mellon University, 2010
- Masters Environmental Studies, The Evergreen State College, 2007
- BSc (H) Physics (minors in Mathematics, Philosophy, Speech Communication), University of Nevada, USA, 2001
Research interests:
Collective decision-making. This includes many processes such as articulating aspirations and values, exercising foresight, confronting uncertainties and risks, and negotiating tradeoffs.
Active research projects:
- Systematic approaches to scenario design for large-scale environmental change
- Path dependencies and discontinuities in social and technological change
- Interdisciplinary knowledge integration for environmental problems, especially climate change
Key publications:
- Schweizer, V.J. and Kurniawan, J.H. (2016) Systematically linking qualitative elements of scenarios across levels, scales, and sectors. In press with Environmental Modelling & Software, doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2015.12.014
- Lloyd, E.A. and Schweizer,V.J. (2014) Objectivity and a comparison of methodological scenario approaches for climate change research. Synthese, 191, 2049-2088.
- Schweizer, V.J. and O’Neill B.C. (2014) Systematic construction of global socioeconomic pathways using internally consistent element combinations. Climatic Change, 122, 431-445 for the Special Issue on "A Framework for the Development of New Socioeconomic Scenarios for Climate Change Research."
- Schweizer, V.J. and Kriegler, E. (2012) Improving environmental change research with systematic techniques for qualitative scenarios. Environmental Research Letters, 7, 044011.
- O’Neill, B.C. and Schweizer, V. (2011) Projection and Prediction: Mapping the Road Ahead. News & Views article for Nature Climate Change, 1, 352–353.
Selected honours / awards:
- Paper with E.A. Lloyd recognized with a Diamond Ranking by editors of Synthese for being one of the top 10 downloaded papers of 2014
- Contributing author to Ch. 21 (Regional Context) of the contribution of Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- Paper with E. Kriegler selected for the "Highlights of 2012" collection of Environmental Research Letters
- Doctoral fellowships from the Link Foundation (Energy Fellow, 2008-2010) and The Henry Luce Foundation (Clare Boothe Luce Fellow, 2005-2007)
Courses taught:
- INTEG 121: Collaboration, Design Thinking, and Problem Solving
- INTEG 251: Creative Thinking
- INTEG 452: Real World Problem Solving
- INTEG 441: Hard Decisions and Wicked Problems