Undergraduate Fellow
Kira Jensen is an interdisciplinary undergraduate student with a foundation in political theory, environmental policy, and mixed‐methods analysis. She was named a 2024 Laidlaw Research & Leadership scholar and was the Primary Investigator for a thesis on the impact of climate change awareness on the career and life trajectories of young adults. Kira holds research assistantships on work spanning AI governance, extreme political discourse, and disability representation in curricula. She takes great pride in her leadership roles, serving as a Student Union Philosophy Director, founder of the "SPARK" Political Leadership Program, and President of the Association of Philosophy Students.
Fellowship Project: Rights of Nature, Wrongs of Power: The Dystopia of Eco-Constitutionalism
Eco-constitutionalism promises a reimagined relationship between law and the natural world—yet often reveals a deeper dystopia. Rights-of-nature frameworks, though framed as moral progress, can expose the erosion of trust in institutions that invoke justice while enabling harm. Through the cases of Ecuador and New Zealand, the research examines the values used to legitimize environmental protection and the worldviews that are excluded. At its core is a question central to environmental ethics: can law shaped by colonial, anthropocentric, and speciesist assumptions truly reflect ecological care—and what does its often symbolic realization reveal about the dystopian character of our legal and political moment?