Geraldine Santoso Wins UMass RAPID Grant to Study Climate Messaging

Human Security Lab Doctoral Researcher Geraldine Santoso has won a UMass Rapid Research Grant for survey experiments on the effects of “climate refugee” rhetoric on citizen perceptions toward both the importance of climate change and their attitudes toward refugees.

The surveys were collected as part of Harvard University’s Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, in which UMass Amherst participates in a research collective with other universities to survey 500,000 Americans in two waves, every two years before and after the general and mid-term elections.

Santoso was interested in testing the theory that “climate refugee” arguments could have effects different than climate security advocates hoped, and embedded questions on climate change and climate refugees into both surveys to see how attitudes shifted pre v. post based on the ‘frames’ embedded in arguments about climate change.

The results will contribute to Santoso’s dissertation, chaired by Human Security Lab Director Charli Carpenter on the effectiveness of “national security” frames in climate advocacy. Santoso is a rising fourth-year doctoral student and Research Enhancement and Leadership (REAL) Fellow at University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds a BA in Anthropology from Skidmore College with research interests in climate security, human security, migration policy, indigenous human rights, and legacies of colonialism.

At Human Security Lab, Santoso also manages the lab’s project on strengthening the nuclear taboo as part of its initiative on “Humanitarian Disarmament," in which the lab measures civilian and military attitudes toward the lawfulness of nuclear weapons use.