Viktoria Spaiser
Viktoria Spaiser is Professor of Climate Politics and Computational Social Science at the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds and affiliate of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures. She lives together with her husband, Richard Mann, Professor of Mathematical Ecology & Evolution at the University of Leeds and their son (born September 2017) in Leeds, UK.
Early life
Viktoria Spaiser was born in November 1981 in Zhetisay (now in Kazakhstan), when it was still part of the Soviet Union. Her family is of Volga German heritage. In 1983 her family relocated to Balykshy (now in Kyrgyzstan). Her father died two years later of Mesothelioma. She has two sisters. In 1991 during the turmoil of Soviet Union collapse the family immigrated to Germany under the Federal Expellee Law, settling eventually in Deggendorf.[citation needed]
Education
Viktoria Spaiser earned her undergraduate degree in Anthropology, Sociology and Psychology from the University of Münster in 2007. With a DAAD fellowship, she then completed a MA in Conflict, Security and Development at King's College London in 2008. She then started a position as a research assistant at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence and in 2009 a PhD in Sociology at the Bielefeld University. In 2010 she received a PhD fellowship from the Hans Böckler Foundation, earning her PhD degree in 2012. Parallel to her PhD studies, Viktoria Spaiser also pursued a long-distance German Diploma in Computer Science at the Trier University of Applied Sciences, completing it in 2013. In 2012 she was a visiting PhD scholar at the ETH Zurich, working with Dirk Helbing.[citation needed]
Career
In October 2012 Viktoria Spaiser started a postdoctoral position at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, working with Peter Hedström. In 2014 she then continued her postdoctoral position in the Department of Mathematics, Uppsala University. In August 2015Viktoria Spaiser started a 5-year tenure position as a University Academic Fellow in Political Science Informatics at the University of Leeds. She was tenured to Associate Professor in Sustainability Research and Computational Social Science in 2020 and became full professor in 2025.[citation needed]
Research
Dynamical Systems Modelling
Viktoria Spaiser has worked with applied mathematicians led by David Sumpter at Uppsala University on developing a Bayesian Dynamical Systems Modelling approach.[1] and applying it to social phenomena such as democratisation, economic development and cultural change[2] as well as to segregation.[3] Viktoria Spaiser combined this method then with other statistical approaches to study Sustainable Development Goals[4][5] and specifically, the inconsistencies of Sustainable Development Goals.
Computational Social Science
Working with Dirk Helbing and his research group, Viktoria Spaiser conducted a study in 2012, using large-scale Twitter data to analyse 2011-2013 Russian protests.[6] In collaboration with Maksym Romenkyy, Viktoria Spaiser used large-scale Twitter data and a mathematical model to study the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine in 2014.[7] Viktoria Spaiser has also employed other computational social science approaches throughout her research, such as agent-based modelling,[8] social network analysis,[9] machine learning,[10] smartphone-based data collection[11] and more recently Large Language Models.[12]
Climate Change and Society/Politics
In 2021 Viktoria Spaiser received the prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to conduct research on how to accelerate social change in response to climate change with a focus on the role of social norms.[13] The research addresses three main questions: (1) What social and normative change do we see already? (2) What is blocking social change to address climate change? (3) How can we accelerate social change to address climate change? She uses a mixed methods approach, including computational, quantitative and qualitative methods, to answer these questions. Within the extension period of the project Viktoria Spaiser also explores the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in researching social change and in empowering actors to bring about social change.
Tipping Points
In 2022/2023 Viktoria Spaiser joined a large, global network of researchers and experts across disciplines, coordinated by Tim Lenton, to produce the first Global Tipping Points Report, that was released at COP28 in 2023.[14] Viktoria Spaiser has specifically led efforts to develop the concept of Negative Social Tipping Points,[15] that was included in the report. She has also contributed and co-led other sections of the report, including on Earth System Tipping Points Governance and Positive Tipping Points, in particular on the role of the climate movements. Viktoria Spaiser has also contributed across sections to the second Global Tipping Points Report, released in 2025[16] and has contributed to various events, communicating the insights from the two reports[17][18][19]
Teaching
Viktoria Spaiser is one of the educators on the free Future Learn course Climate Action: Tackling the Climate Crisis for a Better World.[20]
References
- ↑ Spaiser, Viktoria; Ranganathan, Shyam; Mann, Richard P.; Sumpter, David J. T. (June 6, 2014). "The Dynamics of Democracy, Development and Cultural Values". PLOS ONE. 9 (6): e97856. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0097856. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 4048187. PMID 24905920.
- ↑ Ranganathan S, Nicolis SC, Spaiser V, Sumpter DJT (2015) Understanding Democracy and Development Traps Using a Data-Driven Approach. Big Data 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1089/big.2014.006
- ↑ "Sage Journals: Discover world-class research". Sage Journals. doi:10.1177/0049124116626174. Retrieved February 16, 2026.
- ↑ Spaiser, Viktoria; Ranganathan, Shyam; Swain, Ranjula Bali; Sumpter, David J. T. (November 2, 2017). "The sustainable development oxymoron: quantifying and modelling the incompatibility of sustainable development goals". International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology. 24 (6): 457–470. doi:10.1080/13504509.2016.1235624. ISSN 1350-4509.
- ↑ Spaiser, V.; Scott, K.; Owen, A.; Holland, R. (May 19, 2019). "Consumption-based accounting of CO2 emissions in the sustainable development Goals Agenda". International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology. 26 (4): 282–289. doi:10.1080/13504509.2018.1559252. ISSN 1350-4509.
- ↑ Spaiser, Viktoria; Chadefaux, Thomas; Donnay, Karsten; Russmann, Fabian; Helbing, Dirk (April 3, 2017). "Communication power struggles on social media: A case study of the 2011–12 Russian protests". Journal of Information Technology & Politics. 14 (2): 132–153. doi:10.1080/19331681.2017.1308288. ISSN 1933-1681.
- ↑ Romenskyy, Maksym; Spaiser, Viktoria; Ihle, Thomas; Lobaskin, Vladimir (August 2018). "Polarized Ukraine 2014: opinion and territorial split demonstrated with the bounded confidence XY model, parametrized by Twitter data". Royal Society Open Science. 5 (8): 171935. doi:10.1098/rsos.171935. ISSN 2054-5703. PMC 6124111. PMID 30224983.
- ↑ Spaiser, Viktoria; Sumpter, David J. T. (2016). "Revising the Human Development Sequence Theory Using an Agent-Based Approach and Data". Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. 19 (3). doi:10.18564/jasss.3084. ISSN 1460-7425. Unknown parameter
|article-number=ignored (help) - ↑ Romenskyy, Maksym; Spaiser, Viktoria; Ihle, Thomas; Lobaskin, Vladimir (August 2018). "Polarized Ukraine 2014: opinion and territorial split demonstrated with the bounded confidence XY model, parametrized by Twitter data". Royal Society Open Science. 5 (8): 171935. doi:10.1098/rsos.171935. ISSN 2054-5703. PMC 6124111. PMID 30224983.
- ↑ Nisbett, Nicole; Spaiser, Viktoria; Leston-Bandeira, Cristina; Valdenegro, Daniel (April 21, 2025). "Climate action or delay: the dynamics of competing narratives in the UK political sphere and the influence of climate protest". Climate Policy. 25 (4): 513–526. doi:10.1080/14693062.2024.2398169. ISSN 1469-3062.
- ↑ Spaiser, Viktoria; Nisbett, Nicole (August 28, 2025). "Mobilising climate action with moral appeals in a smartphone-based 8-week field experiment". npj Climate Action. 4 (1): 81. doi:10.1038/s44168-025-00282-x. ISSN 2731-9814. PMC 12394071 Check
|pmc=value (help). PMID 40896164 Check|pmid=value (help). - ↑ Nisbett, Nicole; Spaiser, Viktoria (July 6, 2023). "How convincing are AI-generated moral arguments for climate action?". Frontiers in Climate. 5. doi:10.3389/fclim.2023.1193350. ISSN 2624-9553. Unknown parameter
|article-number=ignored (help) - ↑ "Understanding normative change to address the climate emergency | Centre for Democratic Politics". cdp.leeds.ac.uk. Retrieved February 16, 2026.
- ↑ Studio, University of Exeter Design. "Home". Global Tipping Points. Retrieved February 16, 2026.
- ↑ Spaiser, Viktoria; Juhola, Sirkku; Constantino, Sara M.; Guo, Weisi; Watson, Tabitha; Sillmann, Jana; Craparo, Alessandro; Basel, Ashleigh; Bruun, John T.; Krishnamurthy, Krishna; Scheffran, Jürgen; Pinho, Patricia; Okpara, Uche T.; Donges, Jonathan F.; Bhowmik, Avit (September 10, 2024). "Negative social tipping dynamics resulting from and reinforcing Earth system destabilization". Earth System Dynamics. 15 (5): 1179–1206. doi:10.5194/esd-15-1179-2024. ISSN 2190-4979.
- ↑ "Global Tipping Points | understanding risks & their potential impact". Global Tipping Points. Retrieved February 16, 2026.
- ↑ "Raising Awareness of Earth System Tipping Points: Implications for EU Governance". JRC Publications Repository. Archived from the original on 17 June 2025. Retrieved February 16, 2026.
- ↑ "OECD COP28 Virtual Pavilion". OECD Events. Retrieved February 16, 2026.
- ↑ Global Ocean Forum (November 19, 2025). Ocean Tipping Points webinar: National Oceanography Centre at the COP30 Virtual Ocean Pavilion. Retrieved February 16, 2026 – via YouTube.
- ↑ FutureLearn. "Climate Action: Tackling the Climate Crisis for a Better World - Online Course". FutureLearn. Retrieved 2026-02-16.
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