Student Delegate, COP31
Emma Ramsey is a third year in the College studying Law, Letters, and Society, Political Science, and Russian and East European Studies. Around campus, Ramsey can be found leading tours, hosting events related to expression abroad at the Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, and acting as Co-President of the Society for International Relations.
Originally from New Mexico and of Latvian heritage, Ramsey developed an early interest in the ways people and societies understand their relationship with the natural environment. She is particularly interested in how environmental conditions shape cultural understandings of nature and climate, and, in turn, how these understandings influence societal responses to environmental change and the development of political and legal norms.
Ramsey is also interested in how communities shape climate action and environmental policy. Her research on women’s land-rights movements across the globe has informed her interest in women’s leadership in climate action, particularly the contributions of women-led grassroots and community-based movements to environmental protection and climate resilience. She hopes to explore how locally led, women-driven climate initiatives shape and advance broader international efforts to address the gendered dimensions of climate change, including through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Gender Action Plan.
Ramsey’s interests also extend to the intersection of climate and security, particularly the ways environmental and resource-related interests intersect with geopolitical strategy. Her experience completing the latter years of high school at Li Po Chun United World College in Hong Kong sparked a longstanding interest in the South China Sea dispute. At the International Institute for Strategic Studies–Americas, she conducted research exploring how states frame and mobilize the material environmental and resource-related dimensions of the conflict to legitimize their actions before domestic and international audiences. This work deepened her interest in how environmental concerns and resource competition shape international conflict and the narratives through which states justify their geopolitical interests.