Space Invaders in Climate Governance: Challenging Exclusion and Building Inclusive Practice in International law and Policy making

Workshop Overview

This two-day capacity building workshop for researchers and policy-makers equips participants with critical tools and reflections to challenge exclusionary structures within policy making, especially in climate and ecological spaces such as the UNFCCC and CBD. Inspired by Professor Nirmal Puwar’s Space Invaders (2004), these curated sessions on anti-racist ecologies, power and digitalisation, contested belongings, care and embodied resilience, will welcome speakers and participants to collectively strategise on how we can influence, advocate, and broaden spaces of solidarity within climate and ecological justice movements.

Grounded in anti-colonial praxis and decolonial epistemologies, participants will engage with both theories and practice, including coloniality of power (Quijano, 2000), anti-imperial and anti-racist theories, and the concept of interlocking systems of oppression (Combahee River Collective, 1977), emergence and unknowing (Akomolafe and Ladha, 2017), embodied care (Barton, 2024), climate justice and anti-racist ecologies (Tilley et al., 2022), relational ethics (Kimmerer, 2013) and the praxis inspired by feminist international law and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) (Anghie, 2023, 2007).

Objectives

• Develop the skills, confidence, and language necessary to intervene in formal policy spaces with critical frameworks that challenge extractive logics and promote transformative, inclusive alternatives.

• Reimagine how marginalised bodies can disrupt dominant and transform dominant climate governance structures towards critical climate justice.

• Build a supportive and collaborative network of researchers from diverse backgrounds to collaborate, and support each other in their policy making efforts.

Key discussions will include:

• Decolonising Power and Perspective : Understanding how colonial histories continue to shape modern institutions and knowledge systems.
• Invading Spaces & Belonging in Institutions : Exploring how marginalised bodies disrupt dominant norms and create spaces of belonging.
• Embodying Dissonance, Emergence and Unknowing : Embracing uncertainty and alternative ways of knowing to challenge hegemonic structures.
• Towards Anti-Racist Ecologies : Addressing the racial dimensions of climate change and advocating for climate reparations.
• The Role of Data and Technology in Amplifying Marginalised Voices : Using digital tools to amplify marginalised voices in global climate policy.

Day 1: Exploring Structural Exclusions

09:30 - 10:00 Arrival and Refreshments

10:00 - 10:30 Opening - Professor Nirmal Puwar in Conversation with Dr Manuela Galetto

In Space Invaders: Race, Gender, and Bodies Out of Place, Nirmal Puwar offers a critical framework that explores the complex relationship between bodies and the spaces they inhabit, particularly within institutions undergoing demographic shifts. As minoritised bodies increasingly enter spaces traditionally dominated by more privileged groups, institutions face challenges in facilitating inclusive environments that truly reflect their evolving composition. Puwar introduces the concept of "space invaders" to describe the way in which the presence of these groups can disrupt the traditional power structures, encouraging a rethinking of norms and hierarchies.

Building on Puwar’s insights, this conversation explores the intersection of race, gender, and institutional space, with a focus on the experiences of marginalised individuals within policy making settings. By examining how these dynamics shape the professional trajectories of minoritised bodies, the talk seeks to highlight both the challenges and the opportunities we encounter. It offers a critical understanding of how we as individuals can navigate spaces not originally designed for us, while also shedding light on the transformative potential of our presence in reshaping institutions and advancing more inclusive, equitable practices.

10.30-12:30 | Session 1: Towards Anti-Racist Ecologies – Understanding and Addressing the Racial Dimensions of Climate Change

Objectives:

• Explore the dispossessive and extractive practices that both created the climate crisis and are still embedded in dominant climate solutions
• Reimagine and develop anti-racist ecological practices and approaches

Speakers:

• Dr. Leon Sealey-Huggins, University of Warwick
• Dr Ohiocheoya Omiunu, University of Kent
• Jodi-Ann Wang, Research Director, Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy

Description:

This session will critically examine the historical and contemporary connections between colonial exploitation, racial capitalism, and the institutional frameworks that govern climate action. Speakers will discuss how dominant approaches, from extractive industries to neoliberal climate finance mechanisms, reproduce inequalities and racial hierarchies, exacerbating ecological harms faced predominantly by communities in the Global South. The dialogue aims to identify strategies to dismantle oppressive structures embedded within global climate governance.

12:30-1:15 pm | Lunch

1:15 -4:00 pm Session 2: Power, Race, and the Digital Body

Objectives :

• Explore how digital spaces, platforms, and infrastructures reinforce power dynamics and racial inequities and marginalisation.

• Discuss and critically examine how power relations are embedded within processes of digitalisation, and explore how digital infrastructures might be imagined for more equitable or justice centered outcomes.

Speakers:

• Dr Joy Malala, Warwick Law School
• Dr Sanjay Sharma, Centre of Interdisiciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick
• Dr Siddharth de Souza Centre of Interdisiciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick

Description:

The concept of "space invaders" extends beyond physical spaces to the digital, where challenges facing marginalised communities are manifold. On the one hand, marginalised voices often struggle for visibility while facing algorithmic bias and exclusion. On the other hand, in an age of techno-optimism, the obsession with digitalisation and the creation of online empires has led to new axes of oppression, control, and discrimination. Meanwhile, platforms themselves have become means of amassing new corporate powers.

In this session, we will discuss questions of power, race, and the digital body at three levels. Firstly, we will explore what kinds of worlds are made and unmade through digital tools, and what bodies are included and excluded in these spaces. Secondly, we will examine the continuities of logics of extraction that emerge in digital spaces, and how these relate to materialities critical to the environment. Thirdly, we will discuss whether/how power can be reclaimed in the age of digital economies, and what kinds of strategies, policies and interventions exist to do so.

• Explore how inclusion is experienced and challenged through embodied and creative methods.

• Use zine-making as a medium to reflect on learnings from previous sessions.

Facilitator:

Riya Behl, Institute of Development Studies / Zinedabaad Collective

This workshop explores inclusion in policy-making through storytelling, movement, and zine-making. Zines are non-commercial and self-published booklets, with a rich history as tools of resistance in progressive, social justice movements.

Come experiment with creative forms of expression and ask: What does it mean to make space, for ourselves and each other? We’ll co-create a reflective, playful, and safe space to imagine how we share, hold, and build worlds of care and resistance together. All levels are welcome!

Day 2: Belonging and Collective Care

9:30 am-12:00pm | Session 3: Invading Spaces – Belonging in Institutions

Objectives:

• Examine how institutional spaces are imbued with implicit norms that affect the contested belongings of marginalised communities
• Build solidarity by sharing personal experiences and strategies for creating and maintaining inclusive spaces that foster a sense of belonging.

Speakers:

• Professor Celine Tan, University of Warwick
• Joy Reyes, Manila Observatory
• Dr Amiera Sawas, Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

Description

In this session, we will engage closely with Nirmal Puwar’s concept of ‘space invaders’ (2004), which examines how marginalised bodies disrupt assumptions about who belongs in elite institutional spaces. These spaces, often seen as ‘neutral,’ carry unspoken rules and somatic norms that centre privileged bodies while excluding others. We will reflect on personal experiences of feeling ‘out of place’, exploring how such feelings are not personal failures but rather the result of structural exclusions built into these spaces.

12:00 - 1:00 pm - Lunch

1:00 pm - 4:30 pm Session 4: The Body and Collective Resistance

Camille Sapara Barton (they/she) author of Tending Grief will facilitate this session around somatics and racial justice.

This session will consist of a series of exercises and discussions to introduce participants to the nervous system and how this is impacted by unequal power dynamics, uncertainty and belonging. Practical tools will be shared from

The Resilience ToolkitLink opens in a new window – an embodied, trauma informed framework to reduce stress and create capacity to change harmful conditions in our lives, as well as the collective. Other topics of exploration will include how to create conditions for success by identifying allies and growing coalitions, as well as how to recover effectively after stressful encounters.

Organised by :

Emellyne Forman

Emellyne Forman is an interdisciplinary project manager with a focus on care, justice, policy advocacy. She specialises in managing complex, cross-sectoral projects that bridge academic research, policy development, and civil society engagement. A key area of her work involves trauma-informed embodiment practices, exploring how the body can serve as a site for healing, resistance, and transformation in the face of environmental and social injustice. She integrates these practices into both her professional and personal life, viewing them as essential tools for relational wellbeing and building meaningful communities of care that support the work of justice and sustainability. Emellyne frequently collaborates closely with a diverse range of stakeholders, including artists, activists, policymakers, and researchers, to implement strategies that drive systemic change and challenge harmful and exploitative environments.

Jodi-Ann Wang

Jodi-Ann Jue Xuan Wang is an organiser and researcher currently pursuing her PhD at the Oxford Department of International Development. Her research explores how financialized capital has emerged as a proposed solution to the climate crisis, examining its implications for racial capitalism and international financial subordination. Jodi-Ann is dedicated to ensuring her scholarship actively supports broader civil society movements and organizing efforts. She serves as the Research Director at the Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy, where she coordinates research-backed advocacy for integrating Palestinian liberation within global struggles for ecological and climate justice.

Joy Reyes

Joy Reyes is a climate justice activist and lawyer. She is currently the Technical Advisor of the Klima Center of Manila Observatory, a Staff Lawyer at the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (Friends of the Earth Philippines), and a Policy Officer with the Grantham Research Institute working on climate law and evidence. She has co-written articles on climate governance, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) processes particularly loss and damage and climate justice, and the intersections between environmental and human rights.

Celine Tan

With administrative support from Alethea Choo